Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Going to the GP should be free. Medicare should cover your brain and your teeth. As I reflected on the 40th anniversary of the existence of Medicare, I couldn't help but reflect on the way in which people are still not able to access basic health care. In a cost-of-living crisis such as the community are now in, Labor should provide the bulk-billing rebates to ensure that people can actually get to a GP; they should reinstate the subsidised mental health sessions and take them back to the 20 sessions that you were able to receive previously; and it is beyond time that Medicare fully cover dental care for everyone. Across the country, less than one in four GPs currently still bulk-bill. We have 500 fewer bulk-billing clinics this year than we did last year. The average out-of-pocket cost for seeing a GP is now over $41. In my home state of WA, the city of Perth has one of the lowest rates of bulk billing in the country. I'll say that again: Perth has one of the lowest rates of bulk billing in the country, at 10.3 per cent, second only to Tassie, where the rate is 0.9 per cent.

People are having to choose between the essential health care that they need and putting food on the table. So many people cannot afford these out-of-pocket costs that sometimes spiral as high as 120 bucks to see a GP or into the hundreds of dollars to see a psychologist. We must tax the billionaires and make dental— (Time expired)