Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health and Aged Care. What action is the Albanese Labor government taking to make it easier for Australians to see a doctor for free? Why is the government determined to lift Medicare bulk-billing rates after a decade of cuts and neglect?

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

Order! The member for Fisher is warned. Just as I warned the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, interjecting is highly disorderly when the question is being asked.

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

I thank the member for Lyons for that question. He is such a strong advocate of better health care in Australia—for more bulk billing, for cheaper medicines and for better urgent care services—because he knows that Tasmania was hit so hard by that decade of cuts to and neglect of Medicare. It's especially hard to find a doctor in Tasmania, and bulk-billing rates there have been lower than in any other state for quite some time.

I'm happy to say that a few weeks ago the member for Lyons and I announced a fifth Medicare urgent care clinic for Tasmania, to be based around Bridgewater in his electorate. Like the other clinics, it's going to be open seven days a week, have extended hours and be available for walk-in patients, and, importantly, it will be fully bulk billed. I've said I want this clinic up and running by the end of the year because I know what a difference it will make to the people of Bridgewater but also to surrounding communities like Brighton and the northern suburbs of Hobart.

The member for Lyons has also pushed us hard on better bulk billing. Before the last election, he was one of a number of Labor MPs who were reporting a growing sense of alarm in the community about falling rates of bulk billing for GP visits. The reason for that fall was crystal clear—a deliberate program by the Liberals to undermine bulk billing. We remember that the father of the modern Liberal Party, of course, called bulk billing 'an absolute rort'. The Leader of the Opposition, when he was health minister, tried to abolish bulk billing altogether. He said there were, in his words, too many free Medicare services. Well, that's not our approach.

Last year, in November, we tripled the bulk-billing incentive after a call to do that by the College of General Practitioners. They called that a game changer. I'm pleased to report to the member for Lyons that, since doing that, the bulk-billing rate for GP visits in Tasmania has risen by more than eight per cent, and I've seen increases in every single state and territory since November. In the month of May alone, there were more than 900,000 additional free visits to the doctor—900,000 in just one month.

This government is doing everything it possibly can to help Australians with the cost of living: tax cuts for every taxpayer and energy bill relief for every household. And we know that more free visits to the doctor and cheaper medicines are not just good for the hip pocket, as good as that is; they're also good for your health. At the end of the day, that is how you deliver real cost-of-living relief, not by pushing up power prices through nuclear reactors.