House debates

Thursday, 4 April 2019

Questions without Notice

Budget

2:07 pm

Photo of Scott MorrisonScott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Medicare funding is up by 27 per cent. Bulk-billing is at an all-time high as a result of the strong economy and the strong budget management that we have been running as a government for the last 5½ years. That strong budget management meant—from the time when I delivered last year's budget up until now—we ended the year estimated to be $10 billion better off than what we said in last year's budget. As a result, we took the decision to repeat a measure we put in place a couple of years ago which said that we would provide a one-off payment to support people on pensions—that is, the permanent welfare benefits of pensions. And that's what we decided to do. We've done it before, because we're used to actually outperforming budgets.

We took that measure forward and we then decided that we wanted to have that legislated as quickly as possible to ensure that that measure would get to those pension recipients. There was clearly a mood within this chamber that they wanted to see that extended to other benefits, and we took the practical decision, the honest decision, to do the right thing and not engage in the argy-bargy of partisanship and politics but make a practical decision to get the money to the people we wanted to get it to. We took that decision, and the entire chamber voted for it. So I thank the Leader of the Opposition, I thank my own members and I thank the crossbench for supporting the government's decision to extend that payment to all of those members who will now receive it.

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