Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

Congratulations go to the member for Gorton for her election and her first question. We are really looking forward to her first speech later today. She knows that our promise to strengthen Medicare rested on four pillars: more bulk-billing, more doctors and nurses, more urgent care clinics and cheaper medicines. Making medicines cheaper is not just good for the hip pocket, as important as that is; it's also good for your health.

When we came to government three years ago, the Bureau of Statistics told us that every year around one million Australians, because of cost, went without filling the scripts that their doctor had said was important for their health. Pharmacists were telling us of customers coming through their front door, asking for advice about which script they really needed to fill and which they could go without. That is why we are focused so strongly on making medicines cheaper.

In just our first three months in government, we slashed the maximum amount that pensioners would pay for their medicines, across a given year, by 25 per cent. That already has delivered 73 million additional free scripts, saving pensioners over half a billion dollars. We then delivered the biggest cut to the cost of medicines in the history of the PBS, from $42.50 for a script down to $30, and already that has saved general patients $770 million in their hip pockets. We finally allowed doctors to issue 60-day scripts for common medicines that were taken on an ongoing basis. Already that has saved Australian patients around $250 million and allowed them to avoid 35 million unnecessary trips to the pharmacist. And this year we froze the price of medicines. Pensioners will not see an increase in their medicine prices for the rest of this decade.

As a whole, those four measures have already saved patients $1½ billion in the cost of medicines. But there's more. There's more, because this week I will introduce laws to deliver on the Prime Minister's promise at the guild conference to make medicines even cheaper and to slash the maximum co-payment for general patients to just $25 a script. The last time it was that low was in 2004, 21 years ago. More than five million patients will benefit from this fifth wave of cheaper medicines from this prime minister. It will be good for their hip pocket, but it will also be good for their health.

See this speech in context