Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

I'm not going to pretend that it's going to be a quick or an easy job to fix up nine long years of cuts and neglect. But in our first budget, instead of a GP tax and raising the cost of medicines, we've already invested $160 million in a rural general practice package. We've invested more than $220 million to strengthen general practice grants, which we'll be rolling out over the coming weeks and months. Only last week, again, I met with the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce to advise the government on our investment of $250 million each and every year to strengthen Medicare. Member for Mayo, rest assured that this government has no higher priority than rebuilding general practice.

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