Mark Butler's recent appearances (OpenAustralia.org)
Bennell-Pegg, Ms Katherine | Statements by Members | House debates
Today I rise to acknowledge and to celebrate an extraordinary resident of Adelaide's western suburbs: Katherine Bennell-Pegg, whose achievements continue to inspire Australians right across the...
Today I rise to acknowledge and to celebrate an extraordinary resident of Adelaide's western suburbs: Katherine Bennell-Pegg, whose achievements continue to inspire Australians right across the country. Katherine was born in Sydney in 1984 and, from a very young age, she had an ambitious dream: to become an astronaut. While many childhood dreams fade, Katherine's only grew stronger. With the encouragement of her parents, she committed herself to learning, excelling at school and pursuing interests including aerobatic flying and amateur astronomy. Katherine went on to the University of Sydney, completing honours in aeronautical and space engineering and a Bachelor of Advanced Science in physics. She also served in the Army Reserve, showing strong leadership and discipline well beyond her years then. Her service was recognised with the Sword of Honour and the Field Marshal Sir Thomas Blamey Memorial Award for topping her officer class at the Royal Military College. In 2007, Katherine completed her degrees and was awarded the prestigious Erasmus Mundus Scholarship. This opportunity took her across Europe as part of the Joint European Master in Space Science and Technology program. By 2010, she had completed two master's degrees, in space science and space engineering. From 2014 to 2019, Katherine lived and worked in Europe, building an impressive career at Airbus. During this time, she married her husband, Campbell Pegg, and together they welcomed two daughters. In 2019, Katherine and her family returned to Australia to join the newly established Australian Space Agency in Adelaide. She served as assistant manager of the chief technology office before becoming Director of Space Technology. In 2023, she began astronaut training at the European Space Agency in Germany and in April 2024 became the first person to qualify as an astronaut under the Australian flag. Katherine has been directly involved in NASA's Artemis program, which will return humans to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years. Katherine and her husband, Campbell, worked on the Orion spacecraft, the vehicle central to these missions. Australians are watching with pride and anticipation as she prepares to go further into space than any Australian before her. In recognition of her remarkable journey and her contributions, Katherine was named Australian of the Year for 2026, the third South Australian in just seven years to win that prestigious award. As her local MP, I'm so proud to recognise Katherine Bennell-Pegg as a constituent who embodies determination and excellence. Her achievements show that Australians from our local communities can reach national recognition and even reach for the stars.
General Practitioners | Questions without Notice | House debates
I'm not sure you really want it. You've got to want it harder than that. When we came to government we inherited a position where it had never been harder or more expensive to see a doctor than...
I'm not sure you really want it. You've got to want it harder than that. When we came to government we inherited a position where it had never been harder or more expensive to see a doctor than it was under those opposite, and we were utterly determined to turn that around. Our Strengthening Medicare agenda has four pillars—more bulk-billing, more urgent care clinics, cheaper medicines and more doctors—and we're delivering on all of them. As the member for Macquarie said, under the former government, doctor numbers simply were not keeping pace with the population that is growing, is getting older and is experiencing more chronic disease. We've turned that around. We've expanded the number of medical school places to train more young Australians as doctors. Cairns now has end-to-end medical training thanks to this government, the Northern Territory has its first ever medical school getting up and running this year, and 10 other universities were granted approval by the Minister for Education this year to expand their medical school numbers, with more to come in 2028. We're also cutting red tape and fees for doctors from all around the world who want to come and practise here, particularly from countries whose training systems we have high levels of confidence in, such as the UK, Ireland, New Zealand and others. All of this means we've seen a huge increase in the number of new registrations for medical practitioners—up almost 50 per cent on the position before the COVID pandemic. But I have also been clear, as the member for Macquarie said, that I want to see more junior doctors take up training in general practice—the backbone of a well-functioning healthcare system—which is why I was so delighted to join the college of GPs and the College of Rural and Remote Medicine in the electorate of Spence the other day to announce that a record number of junior doctors are starting their training as GPs this year. Last year was a record, and this year is another record. This year, 2,100 junior doctors are starting their training as GPs or rural generalists, 500 more than the intake under those opposite, and half of them are training outside our big cities. More doctors, more bulk-billing, more urgent care clinics and cheaper medicines—that's what's delivering a stronger Medicare for all Australians.
I thank the member for Macquarie for her question and also her relentless advocacy for an urgent care clinic in her community. I'm delighted, because she told me the Hawkesbury urgent care clinic...
I thank the member for Macquarie for her question and also her relentless advocacy for an urgent care clinic in her community. I'm delighted, because she told me the Hawkesbury urgent care clinic opened last week—the 123rd clinic—and it is already operating very, very well.
Women's Health | Questions without Notice | House debates
Thank you to my friend the member for Dickson for the question but also for joining us in the Mural Hall this morning with the Minister for Women, the Assistant Minister for Health and Ageing and...
Thank you to my friend the member for Dickson for the question but also for joining us in the Mural Hall this morning with the Minister for Women, the Assistant Minister for Health and Ageing and so many others of our colleagues. She is one of a record 69 women who sit in the government party room, and every single one of them regularly reminds me that you can't be serious about strengthening Medicare without being serious about strengthening women's health, because, of course, women consume about 60 per cent of all health services, often not because they're sick but because they're women taking responsibility for their own and their families' reproductive health and planning or because they're going through menopause or perimenopause. The truth is women spent decades in this country simply not getting the support that they needed and that they deserved—no new contraceptive listed on the PBS for more than 30 years, no new menopause treatment listed on the PBS for more than 20 years and no new endometriosis medicine for more than 30 years, not because they didn't exist but forcing Australian women to pay top dollar for the best medicine on the market. Well, this government changed that with a landmark women's health package that we announced one year ago today, and I want to pay credit to the Assistant Minister for Social Services, who crafted that package, and to the Assistant Minister for Health and Ageing, who has spent the last several months implementing it, because this package has made a real difference to Australian women. More than 660,000 women have filled two million scripts for new medicines we listed on the PBS, saving them tens and tens of millions of dollars, after decades of inaction. Every primary health network now has a dedicated endometriosis and pelvic pain clinic either open or due to open over the next several weeks. More than 70,000 women have used the new Medicare menopause assessment just since July, and thousands and thousands of women have used bulk-billed visits to access long-acting contraceptives like IUDs or implants without having to pay the hundreds and hundreds of dollars they had to pay for that service before 1 November. For too long, Australian women were getting short-changed by our healthcare system—not enough attention to keeping the PBS updated, not enough support during phases like menopause and perimenopause, and too often, frankly, being expected simply to suck it up with conditions like endometriosis and pelvic pain. Well, this package has already gone a long way to righting those wrongs and making sure that Australia's women reap the benefits from a stronger Medicare.
Medicare | Questions without Notice | House debates
Thank you to the member for Bendigo for her question and for being such a Medicare champion. The hard work that she has done promoting our Strengthening Medicare agenda in her community means...
Thank you to the member for Bendigo for her question and for being such a Medicare champion. The hard work that she has done promoting our Strengthening Medicare agenda in her community means that the people of Bendigo have enjoyed some of the best results in the country. After we tripled the bulk-billing incentives for pensioners, concession card holders and children back in 2023, bulk-billing in Bendigo went up by 10 per cent, the third-best result of any electorate in this country, and our latest investments are proving just as successful in her community. Before November, fewer than one in five general practices in Bendigo bulk-billed all of their patients all of the time. Today that figure is three in five, more than tripled in just three months. The Bendigo Urgent Care Clinic that the member talks about has also seen almost 20,000 members of her community since it opened in late 2024, all free of charge, and about half of them indicate that, if the clinic wasn't available, they would have gone to the local hospital, the Bendigo hospital emergency department. As a result, semi-urgent and non-urgent presentations to the Bendigo emergency department, what they call category 4 and category five 5 presentations, are down almost 10 per cent at that hospital, freeing up the ED staff to focus on the lifetime emergencies that they were trained for and that hospitals were built for. As the Prime Minister has said, last week he struck an historic agreement with premiers and chief ministers to provide record support to our public hospitals, 750 of them, including the Bendigo hospital, tripling the additional support that hardworking hospitals would receive compared to the agreement that they had struck under Scott Morrison. But that's on top of all of these investments to strengthen Medicare, to deliver high-quality, affordable care to people in their own community, to take pressure off hospitals like the one at Bendigo by rebuilding general practice, by driving up bulk-billing, by rolling out Urgent Care Clinics. But there is more. As the member says, 1800MEDICARE was an election commitment we made last year. It now provides access to high-quality medical advice 24/7 at the end of your phone, as well as, if appropriate, a direct consultation by a GP on telehealth after hours, all free of charge, obviously. Since we launched 1800MEDICARE on 1 January last month, 120,000 Australians have used that helpline and 5,000 of them have been referred to that GP consult after hours. That is 120,000 in just one month, all helping to deliver the stronger Medicare that the member for Bendigo has been fighting so hard for.
Health Legislation Amendment (Prescribing of Pharmaceutical Benefits) Bill 2025; Third Reading | Bills | House debates
by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time.
Health Legislation Amendment (Prescribing of Pharmaceutical Benefits) Bill 2025; Consideration in Detail | Bills | House debates
I thank the member for Mackellar for those remarks and also her engagement on this bill and other bills—particularly in the health portfolio, given her background. She raises some issues...
I thank the member for Mackellar for those remarks and also her engagement on this bill and other bills—particularly in the health portfolio, given her background. She raises some issues that are being ventilated in the Senate committee inquiry in relation to this bill, which is still underway; the committee hasn't yet reported. I reiterate what I said in response to the member for Mallee's amendments—that this change, that's been endorsed by the board and will be the subject of enabling legislation at state and territory level, has been the subject of nine years of work, with patient safety right at the core of that work. I'm glad to hear the member for Mackellar's comments around the national medicines record that I announced last week. 'Prescriber shopping', which was the term the member for Mackellar used, has become much more of a challenge in a telehealth environment. Some tragic cases, one in particular, led to the government making that announcement last week to ensure all prescribers—because that was a question of the number of doctors prescribing—have access to and actually use the records. As I said in response to the member for Mallee's amendments, we've made the announcement. There will now be a process of consultation to design the national medicines record, and we will obviously take account of any change to the prescribing population as we go forward. The other comments, though, that the member for Mackellar makes about the submissions that the college and the AMA have made to the Senate committee, we will take into consideration if this bill passes the House and then moves to the other place after the committee has reported. I want to emphasise again that both doctors' groups were heavily involved in that consultation. Indeed, both of them have pointed to that consultation as being a very high standard compared to another consultation that is under way right now that they're not as happy about. But I also want to say the prescribing rights of this population of registered nurses, who will have to have done additional training and receive the endorsement of the board, is proceeding. Whether or not this bill passes the parliament, that is proceeding. The board has made that decision. State and territory governments have made the decision that they will amend their legislation. The bill before the House now determines whether or not a patient who has a prescription made by an eligible nurse is able to access the PBS, and the member for Mackellar well understands that. This really is an affordability question before the House and then after it the other place, so we will not be supporting the member for Mackellar's amendments in this place. Her comments obviously come from a very good place and from a very rich background as a medical practitioner. We will listen to the submissions that are made by the AMA, the college and other groups that are participating in the Senate committee inquiry. But, as presently advised, we'll be opposing the amendments. Bill agreed to.
As I indicated, we won't be supporting this amendment. The effect of the amendment would really be to ensure that this particular group of registered nurses, who are now able to seek this...
As I indicated, we won't be supporting this amendment. The effect of the amendment would really be to ensure that this particular group of registered nurses, who are now able to seek this endorsement through changes made by the board and will now be able to prescribe as state and territory parliaments change their legislation, which they have all committed to, will not be able to access the PBS. It would effectively make medicines more expensive for patients who had those medicines prescribed under changes that have already been decided on by the board and that are in the process of being made by state and territory parliaments. This legislation will simply ensure that those patients are able to pay PBS prices, not the market prices that the National Party would have them pay under their amendment. I also indicate—and I think I said it in my summing up—that this has been the subject of almost a decade of consultation and modelling by the nurses' board. All the doctors' groups were involved in this as well as, obviously, a range of other groups. The member said that there was no funding available for this. As the member well knows—I know she's very familiar with primary care—the workforce incentive payment already supports the employment of registered nurses in primary care settings. This will simply ensure that they're able to do some more work subject, obviously, to the oversight of medical practitioners working in those practices. Importantly, this will also enable registered nurses, subject to the endorsement of the board, to play a prescribing role, in the appropriate way, in other settings such as: aged-care settings; hospital settings, including for discharge; mental health settings; and others. For those reasons, we will not be supporting the amendment.
Health Legislation Amendment (Prescribing of Pharmaceutical Benefits) Bill 2025; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
I thank the member for Werriwa and all of the other members for their contributions to this important piece of legislation. The Health Legislation Amendment (Prescribing of Pharmaceutical...
I thank the member for Werriwa and all of the other members for their contributions to this important piece of legislation. The Health Legislation Amendment (Prescribing of Pharmaceutical Benefits) Bill amends the National Health Act 1953 to authorise designated registered nurses as prescribers under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, or PBS. These nurses will be able to prescribe specific medicines that qualify for Commonwealth subsidy under the PBS. This bill advances scope-of-practice reforms identified by the Unleashing the Potential of our Health Workforce review, as well as the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce. Since 2017, the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia and chief nursing and midwifery officers have conducted extensive research and consultation on nurse prescribing models. The NMBA, the board, developed these standards for designated registered nurse prescribers through multiple rounds of public consultation, which received strong and broad support. All health ministers endorsed the scheduled medicines standard, which came into effect in September 2025, with the first cohort of nurses expected to complete their education and receive endorsement by July this year. By enabling designated registered nurse prescribing under the PBS, the bill supports safe, timely and affordable access to medicines. Registered nurses can already prescribe. This bill enables them to prescribe under the PBS, improving affordability for consumers. It enables registered nurses to better meet community health needs and strengthens the health system by addressing workforce shortages and building long-term capacity and sustainability. As with other prescribers, the list of medicines that will be able to be prescribed under the PBS by a designated registered nurse prescriber will now be considered, if this bill passes, by the independent Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee. This reform aligns with the objectives of the National Medicines Policy, promoting equitable, affordable and timely access to high-quality medicines and related services. It also supports the government's commitment to deliver cheaper medicines to the Australian community. The bill also amends the Health Insurance Act 1973 to ensure that nurse prescribing under the PBS is also subject to the Professional Services Review Scheme. This peer review mechanism safeguards the integrity of the PBS and other Commonwealth programs. Designated registered nurse prescribers must maintain an active prescribing agreement with an authorised health practitioner, like a medical practitioner or a nurse practitioner, ensuring appropriate oversight and collaboration in care delivery. This legislation supports the government's commitment to enabling Australia's health workforce to operate at full scope of practice. It delivers better access to cheaper medicines under the PBS. I thank the member for Mackellar and the member for Mallee for their proposed amendments to the bill. The government will not be supporting these amendments. The bill has already undergone extensive consultation, as I said, going back to 2017. I also thank the member for Mackellar for her contribution, particularly on maintaining patient safety, which this government is committed to. That's why, only in the past week, I announced steps to deliver a national medicines record, ensuring that patients and their care teams can have accurate and up-to-date medicines information. A consultation process on the design of that medicines record will commence very soon, and, obviously, we'll take account of the change to nurse prescribing under the PBS, if this bill passes. I thank all members for their contributions to the debate on this important bill. Question agreed to. Bill read a second time.
Bolkus, Hon. Nick | Condolences | House debates
It's with a lot of sadness but also a great deal of affection and pride that I want to make a contribution on the motion that was moved by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition's...
It's with a lot of sadness but also a great deal of affection and pride that I want to make a contribution on the motion that was moved by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition's address to it about the passing of Nick Bolkus. Nick was a huge figure in this parliament for a quarter of a century, but he was an even bigger figure in the South Australian community, in the western suburbs that I have the privilege of representing, and particularly in the Labor Party and the left of the Labor Party, which I want to talk about a little bit. He was an enormously important figure to me and to many of my colleagues, like Penny Wong, Jay Weatherill and so many others, and I'll talk about that a little bit. Nick was born in 1950. He tragically passed away on Christmas Day, at the age of 75, and he lived an enormously rich life—albeit one that, in the last six or seven years, was very seriously hampered by illness, and I'll talk a bit about that. His family didn't follow the path that is typical of Greek Australians who came to Australia mainly in the postwar period and, to a degree, a little bit during the Depression in the 1930s, when we opened up our immigration channels to continental Europe. His family was from the very, very small island of Kastellorizo, which is a very short distance—a Kazi, as the Minister for Multicultural Affairs says. This is a small island, very close to the coast of Turkiye. In the early part of World War I, it was very seriously impacted by the Ottoman Empire and some thousands of Kazis fled their homes and crossed the ocean and built a new life either in Canada or in the US—happily, for many of them. I think there were only 8,000 or so at the time in Australia. Nick's grandfather was one of those who left his island home in about 1915. So his family had been well established in Adelaide for a long period of time, before Nick was born in the city, in the West End of Adelaide. He went to Sturt Street Primary School. After it closed, he was a leading figure in lobbying the then Wran government to reopen the Sturt Street Primary School that is still again going strong. Nick, from a very early age, was drawn to the Labor Party. In his teens, he campaigned for Don Dunstan in the seat of Norwood in the 1960s. He was an unsuccessful candidate for state parliament in the mid-1970s in his 20s. He'd worked as a staffer in the Whitlam government before the age of 25, and he was an unsuccessful candidate on what we generally call an unwinnable position on the Senate ticket at the '77 election. But he was allocated a winnable spot by the party in 1980. He was only 30. He was a Greek Australian at a time when it was unusual to obtain pre-selection support, and, most suspiciously in the eyes of the powerbrokers of the South Australian branch of the Labor Party at the time, he had a university degree—a law degree, for that matter—that made him an egghead, and many other names that are not able to be repeated in this chamber because of standing orders and the decorum of the parliament. But he won at the age of 30, and that was the beginning of an extraordinary parliamentary career, extending a quarter of a century. I know the Minister for Multicultural Affairs and the Minister for Skills and Training, who had that portfolio before Dr Aly, will talk about Nick's extraordinary contribution to multicultural affairs, to the immigration portfolio, which he held, to changing, through some extraordinary stories, the lives of tens of thousands of people. It's well known the story that he had responsibility for implementing the promise that Bob Hawke, as Prime Minister, made to people from China in Australia, at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre, that they could stay here. Nick implemented that and changed the lives of so many besides that. At the state memorial service that I had the privilege of being at a little while ago, a Vietnamese Australian woman told the story of Nick and Gareth Evans helping her father, who had been in prison in Vietnam for years and years, be released and come and join the family: the mother and the children, who had then grown up and still live in Australia—just some of those little pearls, the stories that immigration ministers are able to reflect upon as their time in this place concludes. So he made an extraordinary contribution. He had the privilege of serving as a minister in some extraordinary governments, led by two extraordinary prime ministers. He was the first Greek Australian to be appointed to cabinet, and that was something he was deeply proud of, because he was so proud of his culture and he was so widely respected in what is a large Greek Australian community in Adelaide, particularly in the western suburbs of Adelaide that Nick called home for many, many decades. I first met Nick in my teens—in my late teens, when Nick was a junior minister, not yet appointed to cabinet—in the late 1980s at a famous, or to some degree infamous, restaurant in Adelaide's Rundle Street called Da Clemente. What struck me then about Nick was his willingness to listen to a young lad who was probably a complete pain in the backside, and that was what people talk about when they reflect on their time with Nick or observing Nick. He was the most active listener, I think, I've ever encountered. When people sat down with Nick, he wasn't one of those people whose eyes were darting all around the room to see who they could talk to next. People went away from a conversation with Nick feeling like they had been listened to—actively listened to—and that was really one of the enduring things that I think people take from Nick. It's something I see so deeply in his daughter Aria, particularly, who has worked with me for the last couple of years and is campaigning now for the state parliament as well. When I got to know Nick a little bit better in my early 20s and into my 20s, he had the privilege of having a faction named after him. The Bolkus Left was one of the insurgent factions at the time in South Australian Labor Party politics and ultimately won the tussle between warring subfactions of the Left, and the Bolkus Left just became the Left. Although that sounds sort of funny and tongue in cheek, it was actually a really important thing for the South Australian branch, because what came out of Nick using his networks, his experience and his wisdom to seek change in the Labor Party and re-establish what had been a long consensus culture in the branch of the Labor Party in Adelaide has set the party up—as Peter Malinauskas, the Premier, said at the state memorial service—for three decades of real success. This is the best branch in our party. I think it's the most stable. It's had four leaders in 35 years, and our current leader, Peter Malinauskas, is likely to be there for a long time to come. It's been electorally very successful and has made real change in a state and a jurisdiction that's not easy. It doesn't have a lot of the natural advantages that other states have, whether it's the resources you see in Western Australia and Queensland or the big population centres of the two big states. And so Nick's contribution—largely in partnership with now Senator Farrell and also with Pat Conlon, a dear friend of Nick's who worked for him for some time and then became a minister in the Rann government—has set up that branch—which had had a patchy history, I think it's fair to say, before the mid-nineties—for real success and a real contribution to the interests of South Australians. And I think we're all very grateful to him for that. But, while being a busy cabinet minister and then a busy shadow cabinet minister who paid a really leading role after we lost government in 1996 in this place, he always had the time to mentor younger members of the party. I know what an influence he was on Penny Wong. I've witnessed it. I know what an enormous supporter he was of her potential and the need for us as a party to get her into parliament and to use that potential for, in part, our party's interests but, more importantly, the nation's benefit. And he used to have us round the barbecues. He used to talk to us respectfully—with much more respect than I think sometimes we deserved, as precocious pains in the backside, as I said. But it was something that characterised Nick right through his time as a minister, as a shadow minister and then after he left the parliament in the mid-2000s. It reflected the way he'd come up. It really was something for Nick—as I said, a 30-year-old legally qualified Greek Australian—to come into the Australian Senate. It's not so unusual now, which is a terrific thing, but it was. It really was, 45 years ago. That reflected the vision and the support that he got. As I'm sure my friend the member for Makin remembers—he worked in the Whitlam government as a staffer with Nick—it was the support of two giants of the Labor movement, real giants of South Australia, Mick Young, the then member for Port Adelaide, and Clyde Cameron. Clyde was such an important part of the modernisation of our party but really the leader of our branch for three decades or more. He recognised what Nick could bring to the parliament and to our party and the need for us to start making real connections to communities like the Greek Australian community. Nick passed that on. He learned that from Clyde and from Mick and from Reg Bishop and others. He passed it on to Jim Toohey and he passed it on to the next generation, and I for one am so enormously grateful. These things are sometimes tense. The master-apprentice relationship is not always easy and is sometimes a little tense. And John Rau frankly said that Nick might have wanted to spend more time in the parliament and would have made an enormous contribution. But, after leaving the parliament after 25 years, he made every day count. He continued to support the party. He continued to mentor young people. He built an extraordinary career in business. It's not always that people make that transition from being a successful minister to being a successful businessman. Nick undoubtedly did. He had a lot more to contribute and a lot more to give when he was very cruelly struck with an illness 6½ years ago. I was due to have lunch with him and Mel Mansell, the editor-at-large of the Advertiser, and Nick, unusually, was late. After making a call, he had been taken to the Royal Adelaide Hospital and never really recovered. He spent time at Hampstead and then some years at Westminster, a nursing home just near his house and around the corner from my house as well, and was cared for wonderfully, according to his family, by the staff who were there. He rang the bell a lot, agitated a lot for better conditions, as you'd expect. I think we all missed the contributions that Nick otherwise would have made over those last six or seven years. Thank you for the indulgence to say a few words about someone who had such a big impact on my life. In conclusion, I want to say how much the South Australian community, the Greek Australian community in Adelaide and the Labor family have tried to wrap their arms around Nick's family: Nick's wife Mary; his older son Nick, who has built an extraordinary legal career himself—and I know how proud Nick was of the younger Nick—and his two younger daughters, who are now in their 20s, Mikayla and Aria. I've talked about Aria. Mikayla, who I think is only 23, gave an extraordinary address to the memorial service. I know she found it difficult, but it was reflective, it was wise, it had an extraordinary amount of analysis, and it was just so loving of her father. Aria, who I know much better and is, as I said, the candidate for the state seat that I live in—I would love to see her be my local member—was typically strong and forthright and, as her dad would have insisted, used the opportunity to advocate for better policy in aged care and stroke care in particular. Mary said, with tongue in cheek, that the fact that all three are now lawyers showed a real failure of parenthood, and maybe to a degree she was right. They really are apples that didn't fall far from the tree. There's a lot of Nick in all three of them and a lot of their mum as well. I know how proud Nick would have been about the way in which—it's very confronting, I imagine—the community has taken notice of Nick's passing. It's a high-profile passing, and it was a very big funeral at the church, a very big state memorial service. Talking about your dad, who was such a high-profile figure, can't be easy while you're grieving yourself, and they did it with such dignity, warmth and pride of what their father did for their family and did for their community. I couldn't have more respect for all of them than what I have for the way in which they've handled this period of real grief. To Nick I say thank you for the advice and the mentoring that you gave to me. It's meant an enormous amount to me. Thank you for the hospitality you showed us over many years. It was not just instructive; it was fun. It was fun to spend time with you on so many occasions with your family and your friends down at Henley Beach. May you rest in peace.
The member for Calwell is such a terrific advocate for Medicare in his community and in this place because he knows that Medicare is Australia's most important program. He also knows that the...
The member for Calwell is such a terrific advocate for Medicare in his community and in this place because he knows that Medicare is Australia's most important program. He also knows that the beating heart of Medicare is bulk-billing—the promise that every Australian should feel that they can go to the GP whenever they need to, rather than when they feel they can afford to; the promise that all they should need to take to the GP is that little green and gold Medicare card. But we know that, when we came to government three and a bit years ago, bulk-billing was in freefall. That was the description given to it by the College of GPs. And we also know that the reason why it was in freefall was no mystery at all. It was because the Liberal Party government had frozen the Medicare rebate and frozen the income of doctors year after year after year—most of those years—as a result of a budget decision overseen by the Leader of the Opposition, of course, when she was the health minister. Because of that freezing of their income, GP leaders had started to advise their members to walk away from bulk-billing. When we came to government, we were utterly determined to turn that around. In our first full budget, delivered by the Treasurer in 2023, we tripled the incentive that GPs get paid for bulk-billing pensioners, concession card holders and kids. It was a request from the College of GPs, and, when we delivered on it, they called it a game changer. Bulk-billing rates for those Australians are now comfortably back up over 90 per cent. We also delivered the three biggest general increases to the Medicare rebate in 30 years. The biggest, the second biggest and the third biggest since Paul Keating was Prime Minister. Also, only three months ago, for the first time ever, we delivered bulk-billing support to every single Australian, not just those with a concession card. I'm happy to report that, already, that is making a huge difference out in our community. The member for Calwell and I visited the Craigieburn Medical & Dental Centre late last year. Before 1 November, that centre charged gap fees, but, after our incentives were announced, GPs sat down and crunched the numbers and realised that taking up that offer was better for the practice. It was better for GPs individually and obviously it was better for patients. Today, that practice bulk-bills all of their patients all of the time. Indeed, before 1 November, only about half of the GP practices in Calwell bulk-billed all of their patients. Today, that figure is 90 per cent, which is great for GPs, great for household budgets and great for the health of that community. That is why we work so hard to strengthen Medicare.
National Disability Insurance Scheme | Questions without Notice | House debates
Thank you to the member, who knows just how much the NDIS is a proud legacy of our Labor Party. It's a world-leading program of supports for people with significant and permanent—usually...
Thank you to the member, who knows just how much the NDIS is a proud legacy of our Labor Party. It's a world-leading program of supports for people with significant and permanent—usually lifelong—disabilities. But when we came to government we found a scheme that was running off the rails. At a time when the scheme should already have been pretty much fully matured, it was growing at a whopping 22 per cent per year. Our government immediately started the hard work to get that growth rate down to a more sustainable level. We set a target of eight per cent growth this year, in 2026, and the mid-year budget update that the Treasurer published only several weeks ago reported that we are on track to meet that target. But I've also said that an eight per cent growth target for a scheme with a relatively stable population base is still not sustainable. On Friday, state premiers and chief ministers agreed with the Prime Minister and our government to work to get that growth rate down even further to five to six per cent or lower. Of course, we will do that work in close partnership with the disability community itself. But I make the point that sustainable growth in this scheme is not just important for the budget, although it is. It is also a critical way to ensure the long-term future of this absolutely critical scheme. The other concern that we encountered, though, was the huge number of young children enrolled onto the NDIS, particularly young boys. One in six junior primary school boys now are on the NDIS, and in some parts of the country it's as high as one in four. This is simply not what the scheme was set up to do, and it's not the best way to support young children with low to moderate needs. That's why I was also delighted on Friday that state premiers also agreed to our plan to introduce the Thriving Kids program. I want to thank the member for Macarthur, the member for Kooyong and a number of other members in this place for their really quick but comprehensive inquiry into this program that they delivered very recently. I also want to thank the Thriving Kids Advisory Group, which I co-chaired with Professor Frank Oberklaid, for their work to set up this model of a program. It's a program that will be rolled out over the coming couple of years. It will help children with support needs be identified as early as possible. And, importantly, it won't need a formal diagnosis, which we know can take ages and ages to receive and cost thousands and thousands of dollars. Instead, support will be easy and quick to access, and it will be available where young people and their parents live, learn and play. In short, it will give every child in this country the best opportunity to thrive.
Health Care | Questions without Notice | House debates
My point is on this side you'll get work for a stronger Medicare; on that side you get Hobson's choice.
Once fully up and running, this network will see two million patients every single year, not just delivering high-quality urgent care free of charge—all you need is your Medicare...
Once fully up and running, this network will see two million patients every single year, not just delivering high-quality urgent care free of charge—all you need is your Medicare card—but, importantly, taking pressure off our busy emergency departments, something the Prime Minister talked to the premiers and chief ministers about on Friday. All of this is why Australians know what they get from the Labor Party when it comes to Medicare. But, after a decade of cuts and neglect, the alternative is still not very clear at all. Of course, the Leader of the Opposition has got a pretty infamous record on Medicare from her time as health minister. I'm not sure the member for Canning has ever mentioned the word 'Medicare' in this place, and, as for the great pretender to the throne, the member for Hume, who inexplicably remains on the front bench, a man with no apparent honour at all, plotting against his leader from the front bench, well, he described our Medicare investments as wasteful spending! Government members interjecting—
They're all open seven days a week, 365 days a year, with extended hours. Already they've seen 2½ million patients. A third of those patients were children under the age of 15, and a third...
They're all open seven days a week, 365 days a year, with extended hours. Already they've seen 2½ million patients. A third of those patients were children under the age of 15, and a third of them were seen on weekends, where they would find it very difficult to get into their usual general practice. Importantly, every single one of those patients has been fully bulk billed. All they needed was their Medicare card. Once this is fully up and running, the network will see two million patients—
Thank you to the member for Sturt. She's still in her first year, but she's already making a terrific contribution in this place and greatly representing her community in the eastern suburbs of...
Thank you to the member for Sturt. She's still in her first year, but she's already making a terrific contribution in this place and greatly representing her community in the eastern suburbs of Adelaide. Particularly on health, she brings really valuable insights from her time as a board director of the Royal Flying Doctor Service, and she's already delivered on the commitment she made to open a Medicare urgent care clinic in Norwood. It opened on 17 December. It's in the heart of her community on the parade there in Norwood, and it's already seen hundreds and hundreds of patients, like Hermione Farmer's daughter. Ms Farmer wrote online about her experience. She said: My daughter used the walk in Medicare clinic at Norwood on NYE— and it's pretty hard to find a GP clinic open— It was great She got the high quality of care she needed in a timely fashion without sitting around in emergency for hours. That was the promise that the member for Sturt made, and it's just one of 122 Medicare urgent care clinics that are open right now. Another 15 clinics are opening in coming weeks.
I thank the member for Hunter for the question but also for his amazing work as the Special Envoy for Men's Health. He's busy lifting awareness and having honest, sometimes brutally frank...
I thank the member for Hunter for the question but also for his amazing work as the Special Envoy for Men's Health. He's busy lifting awareness and having honest, sometimes brutally frank conversations with Australian men about looking after themselves, about getting checked regularly, about seeking help if something doesn't seem quite right and about looking out for each other as well. I'm delighted that the member has agreed to take a leading role this year in the fight against prostate cancer as well. Of course, this is Australia's most common cancer. One in five Australian men will receive a prostate cancer diagnosis at some point in their life. Although we have very, very high five-year survival rates, around 4,000 Australian men every single year lose their battle to this cancer. On Sunday I was delighted to announce the government's 399th new listing on the PBS, a drug called Andriga-10. It's a new combination therapy for advanced prostate cancer that has proved resistant to surgical or chemical castration. Around 2,000 men will have access to this medicine, including Charles Abdilla, a terrific 84-year-old who joined us at the announcement at the Royal Adelaide Hospital on Sunday. Before Sunday, this new combination therapy would have cost around $900 per script, or $10,000 a year. Now it will be available to those 2,000 men at affordable PBS prices. As the member for Hunter knows, we've been busy ever since we were elected, making PBS scripts cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. In our first few months in government, three years ago, we slashed, by 25 per cent, the maximum amount that pensioners and concession card holders would pay for all of their medicine needs in a given year. Since then, pensioners and concession card holders have received an additional 87½ million scripts completely free of charge—scripts they otherwise would have had to pay for—saving them hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. Finally, we delivered 60-day scripts for hundreds of common medicines, saving patients more time and even more money. As the Prime Minister has already said, last month we delivered another huge cut to the maximum price of PBS scripts, lowering it to just $25, the same level it was way back in 2004. For pensioners and concession card holders, we haven't just frozen their medicine prices this year; we've frozen them for the rest of the decade. When we came to government, a million Australians were saying they weren't filling scripts that their doctor had said were important for their health, because of cost. These cheaper medicines policies are changing that equation. It's good for their hip pocket, but it's also good for our nation's health.
Aged Care | Questions without Notice | House debates
I thank the member for her question, for her deep interest in aged-care issues, in particular, and for her engagement with me and with other aged-care ministers over the course of her time in...
I thank the member for her question, for her deep interest in aged-care issues, in particular, and for her engagement with me and with other aged-care ministers over the course of her time in government. As you know, there's been quite a deep public discussion about the issue of longer-stay older patients in public hospitals across the country, perhaps with the exception of Victoria, where there's a pretty strong state-run nursing home system that takes a lot of those patients more directly. But there's no question—the increase in longer-stay older patients across the rest of the country is quite significant and, frankly, tracks the increase we are seeing in the number of very old Australians as a result of the ageing of the baby boomer population. This is increasing demand for residential aged care and it is increasing pressure, by extension, on our hospital system. From the first term of the Albanese government, we have undertaken arrangements with different state governments to fund programs to divert older Australians from hospitals in the first place; they include, in South Australia, geriatric outreach teams that go out to aged-care facilities to try to prevent admission in the first place. Those are working very, very well. They're the subject of Commonwealth funding. We're also trying to ensure, as far as possible, that people are able to leave a hospital if they are medically able to do so. That, ultimately, in some cases, depends on there being a residential aged-care bed available to them, and we know there is a shortage of residential aged-care beds right across the system. That is why we put so much energy, particularly under the former minister for aged care, into designing a new aged-care system that would stimulate new investment—investment that had fallen off a cliff, frankly, over the period leading into and certainly during the COVID pandemic. Now, we are still engaged with state governments about that. It is a significant part of the negotiations that remain underway between the Commonwealth and all state and territory governments for a new five-year hospital funding agreement. Quite explicitly, a part of that negotiation has been to continue, and maybe extend and expand, arrangements, including Commonwealth funding for longer-stay older patients, as I said, to try to avoid them having to go to hospital in the first place and, if they do end up in hospital, to have a smooth transition out of hospital into an alternative place, whether that's at home with a home-care package or into a residential aged-care facility. Those negotiations are ongoing. We hope to strike a deal, particularly before the South Australian government goes into caretaker mode. If we're not able to do that, we start to get right up against the end of this financial year, given we only have a one-year agreement so far, and this will be a big part of those negotiations going forward.
Bondi Beach Attack Victims | Condolences | House debates
It has been 36 days since the devastating antisemitic terrorist attack at Bondi Beach; 36 days since 15 innocent people had their lives so cruelly stolen from them; 36 days of unimaginable grief...
It has been 36 days since the devastating antisemitic terrorist attack at Bondi Beach; 36 days since 15 innocent people had their lives so cruelly stolen from them; 36 days of unimaginable grief for families who will never again hold their loved ones, never hear their laughter, never share another moment together. The Bondi terror attack was an act of pure hatred and cowardice. First and foremost, obviously, it was an act of mass murder targeted at Jewish Australians. But, by extension, it was a deliberate attempt to instil fear and to divide our community. It was an act of antisemitism. We must call it what it was. More than 150 years ago, my great-great-great-grandparents, Abraham and Sarah, migrated to Australia to join a growing Jewish community in vibrant 1870s Melbourne. Able to participate fully in civil and commercial life, and having built an extraordinary contributing livelihood, Abraham bragged at one stage that he had overseen the laying of more railway track than any other person in Victoria at the time. It was a community in Melbourne, attracted to the richness of the gold rush, that ultimately gave Australia its first locally-born governor-general, Sir Isaac Isaacs, and our greatest general ever, Sir John Monash, who led my great-grandfather onto Anzac Cove on 25 April 1915. My mother and her mother—although that side of the family moved to Adelaide and strayed from the Jewish faith—always taught me and my family to be proud of our Jewish heritage and of a country that gave a safe space for our forebears to come to, free from the antisemitism that was so rife across the globe, and allowed them to build such a wonderful life for them and their family, now six generations ago. After World War II, Australia welcomed even more Jewish migrants and enthusiastically supported the creation of the State of Israel. Australia famously cast the first vote in favour of that motion at the United Nations, a decision I remain unshakably proud of. That environment that allowed Jewish Australians to lead full, contributing lives—largely unmolested by the antisemitism in other parts of the world—has been under serious threat since the massacre on 7 October 2023. I had the privilege of representing the government at large gatherings of the Jewish community in the eastern suburbs of Sydney—first of all, only a matter of two or three days after the massacre, and then on the 12-month anniversary of the massacre. I remember the former deputy prime minister, the member for Riverina, being there. I was there speaking on behalf of the government with then leader of the opposition Peter Dutton and NSW Premier Chris Minns, and with thousands of members of those communities, on those two occasions. Talking to that community, the sense of terror—obviously for loved ones back in Israel, but also the sense of terror here in Australia—and the sense that something had changed in a step-change way was really quite profoundly moving to me and, I imagine, to others who were at those events. It was a spike in antisemitism that's continued since 7 October 2023. It started in the hours of that massacre. It really came from an unholy collection of disparate groups coming together spewing hate: the open chanting of phrases on our streets that urged the destruction of the only Jewish state on the planet; the intimidation of Jewish students on campus; and so much more exclusion and discrimination right throughout civic, commercial, cultural and academic life, as well as in a sector I most deal with—the health sector. Only Jewish parents, as we've heard through so many contributions, have to watch their children walk into childcare centres or walk into schools surrounded by twelve-foot fences with security guards. Only Jewish aged-care facilities—and this is not widely known—have had to hire security guards 24/7 on police advice because of the threats of violence directed towards aged-care facilities: violence directed towards older Jewish Australians, many of them Holocaust survivors, in a facility for the final months of their life. And now, of course, there is the Bondi terror attack, the most horrific and shocking manifestation of antisemitism our country has ever seen. I acknowledge the deep pain and the fear this is causing Jewish Australians, and I acknowledge the trauma and anxiety gripping the Jewish community and the wider Bondi community—something that, in our health portfolio, we have been working on very closely with NSW Health. Our government, along with NSW Health, have moved quickly to deliver immediate mental health supports on the ground and across Jewish communities right across Australia because we know that the trauma is deep and we know from other traumatic events—some of them natural disasters or attacks like this—that the tail of mental distress is a long one that governments are going to need to provide support for. Australia will never forget this awful day, the lives that were so cruelly taken or the heroism shown by so many first responders and people in the health sector. We stand with the Jewish community and with every family member and friend who has been touched by this tragedy. To those grieving, I offer my deepest condolences. Australia mourns with you.
Thank you to the member for Lalor for her question and her support for a stronger Medicare. There are now 29 Medicare bulk-billing practices in her electorate that are bulk-billing all of their...
Thank you to the member for Lalor for her question and her support for a stronger Medicare. There are now 29 Medicare bulk-billing practices in her electorate that are bulk-billing all of their patients all of the time, as well as the Werribee urgent care clinic that's seen almost 30,000 patients, and early next year there will be a new endometriosis and pelvic pain clinic in Werribee as well. This government is ending the year as we began it—focused on a stronger Medicare and cheaper medicines. In just the first sitting week of this year, the government announced a landmark women's health package, listing, for the first time in decades, new contraceptives and new menopause treatments. Since then, more than 550,000 Australian women have saved tens of millions of dollars at the pharmacy counter because of that decision. Just a couple of weeks after that, the Prime Minister announced the largest ever investment in bulk-billing in Medicare's history. Already, well over a thousand general practices have gone from charging gap fees last month to bulk-billing all of their patients this month, and that number is increasing every day. That same day, we promised more doctors into the system. This year we've trained more junior doctors as GPs than ever before, and next year we'll break that record again. Just two weeks after that announcement, we announced 50 more Medicare urgent care clinics. Three are already open; 47 will be announced before Christmas and will be open in the following weeks. Then four out of five Australians will live within a 20-minute drive of an urgent care clinic open seven days a week, with extended hours and fully bulk-billed. All you'll need to take is your Medicare card. If that's not enough, two weeks after that, the Prime Minister attended the Pharmacy Guild conference and announced our latest wave of cheaper medicines measures: freezing the maximum script price for pensioners all the way to the end of this decade and slashing the maximum amount that general patients pay at the pharmacy counter to just $25 on 1 January—the same price it was way back in 2004. This was the most comprehensive health policy package any party has taken to an election since Bob Hawke promised to introduce Medicare in 1983, and we are delivering on every single thing that we promised because, for this party, for the Australian people, nothing is more important than a strong Medicare.