Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for her question, and I encourage the opposition, over the next three years, to double down and keep digging when it comes to Medicare and to keep criticising the policy that they themselves adopted on that very day—on that very day! We were somewhat surprised, I must say, in Launceston, that, when we came off stage and before I even did any discussion with the journalists after we launched the policy and gave them the documentation, the opposition had already agreed to that policy and matched it. If they read the documents that we released on that day, what they would see is it was fully costed—$8.5 billion over the forwards—that it was due to come into operation later this year, that it would provide for bulk-billing rates to rise to 90 per cent by 2030 and that it was based upon the experience that we'd had at the previous budget, where we introduced the bulk-billing incentive, tripling it. The largest investment at the time.

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