Malarndirri McCarthy (NT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Indigenous Australians) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Steele-John for the question and for his deep interest in the area of health. Like Senator Wong, we are incredibly proud of the announcement today in regard to boosting our hospital systems right across Australia—and, in fact, behind Medicare.

In November 2021, six months before the last election, the financial viability of general practice was in serious trouble after the coalition's six-year freeze on Medicare rebates, which started when Peter Dutton was Minister for Health. The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners took the extraordinary step of calling on every GP in the country to stop bulk-billing to maintain the viability of general practice. Dr Karen Price said, 'This is why, as a college, I'm exhorting everybody, including my own practice, to move as many people as you can onto private billing.'

At the time of the last election the Minister for Health and Aged Care, Mark Butler, said that general practice was in the most parlous state in the 40-year history of Medicare. Bulk-billing was falling off a cliff because of the six-year freeze on Medicare rebates. We have a different approach: more doctors, more bulk-billing and more urgent care clinics. That's our approach to strengthening Medicare, which is why we tripled the bulk-billing incentive from 1 November last year. We tripled it in the largest investment in bulk-billing in history. Since we tripled the investment, we have seen a turnaround in bulk-billing with a national increase of 1.9 percentage points in the first year—75.6 per cent to 77.5 per cent.