Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Payments) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers given by the Attorney-General (Senator Brandis) to questions without notice asked by Senators Watt, Dastyari and Brown today.

The answers that we received from Senator Brandis today in question time leave me in no doubt that the people in my home state of Tasmania are the losers under the Turnbull government. After the election, Mr Turnbull said that he had learnt the lesson on Medicare, and Mr Turnbull also claimed that bulk-billing would be protected. It has taken a massive blow in the first post-election data, which shows that the Medicare freeze is indeed biting. In relation to those figures, today of course Senator Brandis was not able to give me any answers when I asked him about my home state of Tasmania. It is very good to see that two of the Liberal senators from Tasmania, Senator Duniam and Senator Bushby, are here, because really they need to be taking it up to this government and talking to their Prime Minister about what is happening in Tasmania on bulk-billing. Tasmania, of course, is already the state with the lowest bulk-billing rates of any state around the country.

What have we had from the first set of data that has been released? This data reflects what is happening after the 2 July election. These are the government's own figures, and those figures show that bulk-billing is dropping. As I said in my question to Senator Brandis today, the bulk-billing rates for GP visits in Tasmania have dropped a massive 2.4 percentage points, which in effect is 16,000 GP visits. During the election, as I have previously told the Senate, in GP surgeries there were a number of notices that indicated to patients: 'Due to the Medicare freeze on rebates, we unfortunately, as a surgery, can no longer continue to bulk-bill all concession card holders.' This is what GP surgeries were telling their patients. This is not something that I have just come in here and made up; these are notices that were in GP surgeries. That was what was going to happen after 1 July, and indeed this set of data that has been put out now, up to the quarter of September, shows that what the Labor said during the campaign would happen has indeed happened. So not only has Tasmania had a massive drop of 2.4 percentage points but, over the country, we have seen a drop of half a percentage point, which in effect is over 167,000 GP visits nationally.

We have already seen that this is just the start of the impact of this government's six-year Medicare freeze. Every time a Tasmanian goes to the doctor, they will have to pay out more money. This is what the Labor Party said would happen, and this is what this Prime Minister said would not happen. He gave a commitment about bulk-billing figures. But of course it is not just me and the Labor Party talking about what is going to happen. The dataset that has been released confirms this. Senator Brandis was unable to answer the questions that were put to him in question time today, and I was not really expecting an answer, because the answer would actually confirm the Labor Party's position: that the bulk-billing rates are falling and that Tasmania is one of the worst hit states.

We are not the only ones that are saying this. GPs are saying it. The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners said last month that out-of-pocket costs for a patient to visit the GP have increased by six per cent in the past year under your government, Senator Duniam. I wonder what you are going to do. Stand up for Tasmania! Stand up for Tasmanian patients! (Time expired)