Matt Burnell (Spence, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health and Aged Care. How is the Albanese Labor government strengthening Medicare and making medicines cheaper? After a decade of cuts and neglect to our healthcare system, why is this work essential?

Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Spence for his question. He is a terrific representative of the proud northern suburbs of Adelaide, a community that gave us Barnesy, Holden and Australia's best ever health minister, Neal Blewett, who introduced Medicare almost 40 years ago.

The member for Spence knows how important to his community Medicare and the PBS are, which is why he's constantly on his feet in this place backing in this government's plan to strengthen Medicare. At the end of budget week back in May, he hosted the Prime Minister and me at a GP clinic in Elizabeth to discuss our historic investment that week in bulk-billing. I want to remind him of a quote from the owner of that clinic, who said to the media that day: 'The tripling in the bulk-billing incentive is going to make a big difference. Our clinic was actually going to put in a $10 to $15 charge for healthcare cardholders as a gap fee, and that's not going to happen anymore.' Basically, it means more bulk-billing doctors, more bulk-billed patients and, we hope, lower ED presentations at the hospital.

Yesterday, at the Health of the Nation forum, an owner of a clinic in Townsville, in the member for Herbert's electorate, told that forum that they had introduced a gap fee for pensioners and kids in February because of cost pressures. As a result of the tripling that took effect on 1 November, they got rid of that gap fee and they've returned to bulk-billing. The College of GPs said: 'The tripling of the bulk-billing incentive genuinely is a game-changer.'

After a decade of cuts and neglect to Medicare, we know bulk-billing had been in serious decline, as much as the former government tried to cover that up. That decline was no accident. The father of the modern Liberal Party, John Howard, said that bulk-billing was an 'absolute rort'. The Leader of the Opposition, when he was health minister, said, 'There are too many free Medicare services.' So he tried to abolish bulk-billing altogether.

Well, if he tried that, we've tripled the bulk-billing incentive. Where he froze the Medicare rebate for six long years, the Treasurer this year delivered the biggest across-the-board increase in the Medicare rebate in more than three decades—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Fisher will cease interjecting.

Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

more than at any time since Paul Keating was the Prime Minister. Well, after 10 years of cuts and neglect by a party that's never genuinely supported the Medicare system, we are getting on with the job of strengthening Medicare through tripling the bulk-billing incentive; through rolling out a network of Medicare urgent care clinics that are open seven days a week, fully bulk-billed; and by delivering cheaper medicines.