Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to speak about health tonight in the chamber. I'll take the opportunity because today we passed the National Health Amendment (Supporting Patient Access to Cheaper Medicines and Other Measures) Bill 2024 in this chamber. Labor has always believed that life-saving and life-changing medicines should be affordable and easy to access. Cheaper medicines have been part of our overall strategy in relation to Australians' health since coming to government. I'm very proud of the fact that it's been the Anthony Albanese Labor government that has actually had the fortitude and the guts to introduce 60-day scripts. After all, we remember that those opposite were given the advice that we needed to shift to that to reduce the number of visits to GPs, to allow people to spend less time in a GP's clinic waiting to get a script and to enable them to save money by getting a 60-day script rather than having to keep going back. We did that because Labor believes that we need to ensure medicine is cheaper. We were prepared to stand up to Pharmacy Guild, unlike those opposite when they were in government.

We have in fact not only reduced the cost of medicines and brought in 60-day scripts but also re-incentivised our GPs around the country to increase their bulk-billing to pensioners and to children. We've seen a significant increase in bulk-billing around the country and particularly in my home state of Tasmania. Our government has also frozen the indexation rate of the PBS co-payment so that all Australians for the next 12 months will not have an increase to the cost of their medications. For concession card holders, we have in fact frozen that payment for five years. These are all areas that are going to help the Australian community with the cost of living. It is important that we invest in health because better health outcomes are better for our economy and better for our communities.

I want to give a big shout-out to the Hon. Mark Butler, the Minister for Health and Aged Care, for what he has done in terms of leading the way in incentivising GPs to do a greater amount of bulk-billing. He's actually incentivised GPs in that area. We have seen the implementation of our urgent care clinics. If you need to see a GP, you can go and see a doctor at these urgent care clinics. I know how busy the one in Launceston has been. All you need is your Medicare card; you don't need your credit card. Let's not forget that it was Mr Peter Dutton, the now Liberal leader, who, as a former minister for health, was voted by the AMA as the worse health minister for 35 years. I'd say he was really the worst minister for health, border force and immigration that Australia has ever seen. That would be my personal opinion.

But we actually value investing in Australians' health. We are now leading the way in terms of changing vaping laws in this country. Because we understand the scourge of what vaping is doing to young people in this country, we again are leading the way, as we did with plain packaging, in encouraging people to give up cigarette smoking. It is a Labor government—again, I give a big shout-out to Mark Butler and what he has been doing in this area of health, because if we invest in the health of the Australian people then we will get not only a huge return from an economic point of view but a much stronger, cohesive community. (Time expired)