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

I had the privilege this week to be introduced to a young woman who has a very rare cancer. It was at an event hosted by Rare Cancers Australia. This young woman, living in regional Australia, is 33 years old and got the terrible news that she has a very rare terminal cancer. When she finally got the diagnosis, her choice of whether she lived or died depended on her access to superannuation. She is a beautiful young woman with her whole life ahead of her. She is very lucky that the treatment that she's under at the moment is working, but it is $8,000 every time. That's not what it's about. We provide Medicare and support for all Australians.

That leads me to the meeting I had with rural GPs today in my office. I come from Tasmania, a rural and regional state. We know what it's like not to have access to specialists when we need them, and the demand on GPs is so great. So I give a shout-out to Rare Cancers Australia for all the work that they do about raising awareness.

But we want equality in this country. There's the threat of a Liberal government under Mr Dutton if he were to become Prime Minister. We know his record of cutting and using the health budget and the aged-care budget as ATMs, and that's in stark contrast to the work that Minister Mark Butler has done in the almost three years that we have been in government. There is a stark contrast. You cannot afford to risk the Liberals introducing another GP tax. For a decade, they did nothing about giving any incentives for GPs to allow longer consultations or training more GPs so that we have them in rural and regional Australia. Every Australian living in a regional or rural area is equal to any Australian living in a city in this country. (Time expired)

Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One Nation's plan to put more money in Australians' pockets has a focus on strengthening Medicare. We'll begin by targeting fraud. As we learnt from the Independent Review of Medicare Integrity and Compliance, released by the Minister for Health and Aged Care in April 2023, the system has been rorted by up to $3 billion a year. There have been many examples of people using other people's Medicare cards or of doctors claiming rebates for patients they did not see. There are other examples of Medicare funded appointments being used to obtain cheap prescriptions sold at obscene profits both here and overseas. Much of this can be prevented by simply requiring photo ID on Medicare cards.

One Nation's policy will increase bulk-billing rates, which have fallen under Labor. According to the 2025 report on government services released this month, in 2023-24 bulk-billing rates declined from 51.7 per cent to 47.7 per cent despite significant funding injections by Labor. In the same year, the average out-of-pocket cost for a patient to see a GP was $45, and nine per cent of patients either delayed appointments or simply didn't go because of the cost. One Nation's policy will also look at increasing the Medicare rebate to better support bulk-billing. GPs facing huge costs increases in rent, rates, insurance and energy need to be better remunerated if bulk-billing rates are to improve and if we want to prevent the exit of GPs from the system.

Medicare must be made sustainable if we want Australians to continue to have access to affordable Medicare. Let's put photo ID on the Medicare card so that we stop this fraud and stop people coming in from overseas, taking up the Medicare cards of friends and family, using our services, getting their scripts and taking back medicines. We know that fraud is up to $3 billion a year. (Time expired)