Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise after two contributions: one from those who have no sense of managing a budget in any possible way, where money comes from nowhere and everything can be provided for immediately; and a negative one from the senator opposite who is from the party that wants to cut and cut and cut—$350 billion. They're the party that said Medicare was an impossible thing to deliver and that said superannuation was an impossibility to deliver. In between those two gross extremes that have no responsible vision for the nation, there sits the Labor Party governing with integrity, creating not simplistic solutions to complex challenges, as proposed by Senator McKim in this urgency motion, but solutions that will involve the hard work of the kind that the Albanese Labor government has undertaken to ease the cost-of-living pressures that are a real thing for Australians.

Let's be clear. We in Labor don't just talk about fairness; we deliver it. We believe in making multinationals pay, and we delivered that in legislation in November 2024. We believe in ensuring that every taxpayer gets a tax cut, so we delivered stage 3 tax cuts to every working Australian, whereas Senator Canavan would have only given them to a much smaller number of people and certainly left those in the lower end of the income band stranded, ignored and without any increase in their tax return. We believe in strengthening Medicare so that every Australian can access quality and affordable health care. Here we are in government, doing what we've done now for five decades—after delivering Medicare, we've had to rebuild it time and time again. And then there was that miserly, penny-pinching, cost-of-everything, value-of-nothing contribution that we had from Senator Canavan, which leads nowhere good for our nation.

The Greens want to claim that they're the only party concerned with the cost of living, but the reality is that, while they grandstand here in the parliament and make demands without a plan, the Albanese government is delivering real relief. For millions of Australians, being able to see a GP without an out-of-pocket cost is the difference between getting the care that they need and delaying an appointment until things have got much worse, they end up in hospital and it costs even more. It's a ridiculous proposition. That's why we had to fix it once again, and we tripled the bulk-billing incentive. That is the single biggest investment in bulk-billing in Medicare's history. When Labor returned to government after a period of attack on that fundamental need of Australians, it was clear that Labor was the only party that would deliver for Medicare and for the health of Australians.

So we introduced this policy this time, in the last three years, and more than six million Australians have had additional GP visit that have been bulk-billed. That's really a massive change for pensioners, parents and low-income Australians who are no longer forced to pay to see a doctor. It means fewer people having to make the difficult choice between medical care and paying their bills. We need healthy Australians who can afford care who are able to continue to contribute to our society. This isn't theory to us as Labor people. We are making sure that Medicare holds up. Bulk billing rates, which were in freefall after the nine years of Liberal cuts, are now rising again, and that's just one part of our $2.8 billion of investment of your Australian taxpayer dollars to strengthen what we know you value: Medicare—that little card in your wallet that you wouldn't have except for the Labor Party delivering the whole policy and rebuilding Medicare after the vandal-like attacks of those opposite.

We're investing in urgent care centres. Millions of Australians have already had the benefit of that since we came to government in 2022 and brought that into being. There are more free mental health services and higher rebates for essential tests and treatments. This is real relief for Australians who need it most. Now, the Greens demand a whole raft of new taxes. This government has ethically and in a principled way taken deliberate action to ensure multinationals pay their fair share, and we will make sure Australians get the benefit of that investment.