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

I'm helping those opposite to understand the policy they took to the last election which will take effect on 1 November, and clinics will decide whether to take up the very generous offer we made—and those opposite matched—to extend bulk-billing support to every single patient in the country. We're very confident in the modelling. They may not have bothered to look at it as they were considering whether or not to support our policy, but we're very confident about the modelling. Three-quarters of clinics will move to full bulk-billing. The rest will have something less than that. And, when you add those two together, we will get to 90 per cent bulk-billing by the end of this decade. We're very confident.

But what this has done is cleared up whether the support that those opposite apparently gave to our policy was some road-to-Damascus conversion by Peter Dutton and by the now leader of the opposition—who caused this problem in the first place—or whether it was a cynical, political device. This question clears that up forever.

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