Zaneta Mascarenhas (Swan, 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 continuing to deliver cheaper medicines? How is this helping to deliver cost-of-living help for every Australian after a decade of cuts and neglect?

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

on indulgence—Mr Speaker, can I echo your welcome to the delegates from Bowel Cancer Australia who've been here today talking to members across the chamber about their personal, powerful stories and welcome them this afternoon.

I thank the member for Swan for her question. Two years ago she promised her electors in the City of Perth a stronger Medicare, and over the last two years we have been busy delivering on that promise: through tripling the bulk-billing incentive, which in just seven months has delivered almost two million additional free visits to the doctor; through our network of urgent care clinics, which has already seen 450,000 patients—every single one of whom have been fully bulk-billed; and through cheaper medicines.

In just the first three months of our government, we slashed the maximum amount that millions of pensioners would pay for all of their medicines in a given year by 25 per cent. In our first 12 months, we delivered the biggest cut to the price of medicines in the 75-year history of the PBS. In our first 18 months, we finally allowed doctors to prescribe common medicines for chronic conditions for 60-day supply, not just 30. And in three months time, another 100 medicines will be added to that list, which I am sure the Leader of the Nationals will welcome. And in our first two years, we've made more than 200 new or expanded listings to the PBS, giving Australian patients access to the best cutting-edge treatments available anywhere in the world at affordable PBS prices. Already Australians have saved more than $400 million from these measures, delivering real help on cost of living.

But we know that we can provide even more help, which is why, in last month's budget, this government introduced a freeze on medicine prices for up to five years, which will save patients another almost half-a-billion dollars. This cost-of-living relief would be important at any time, but, as the member for Swan says, it is particularly important coming on the back of a decade of cuts and neglect to Medicare, which of course were kicked off by the Leader of the Opposition's famous horror health budget from a decade ago. Along with cuts to hospital funding and a GP tax for every visit to the doctor, this man tried to make medicines more expensive—not cheaper; more expensive—by jacking up the price by up to $5 a script. That's not our approach. It's an approach he's never disowned, but it's not our approach.

Better bulk-billing arrangements, cheaper medicines—that's how you deliver real cost-of-living relief. Not through a GP tax, not through more expensive medicines and certainly not by pushing up power prices through nuclear reactors.