Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

On 3 May 2025, Australians voted for cheaper medicines, and they voted for a government that will always protect Medicare. One of the reasons they did that was that they'd seen what had happened over the three years prior. They had seen those opposite vote against cheaper medicines not once, not twice, not three times but six times. We saw the Australian people have their say. They supported our cheaper medicines programs and they rejected the view that those opposite put, which was the view that our medical urgent care clinics were, to quote those in the opposition, 'wasteful spending'. The Australian people had a very different view. They saw the investments that we had made in Medicare urgent care clinics as essential for the primary health of our nation. I put it very clearly to my electorate in Perth. I said, 'Vote to save the Perth urgent care clinic,' and, indeed, they did.

What we've seen when it comes to cheaper medicines is that these policies are broadly supported by the Australian public, so much so that even those opposite who absolutely hate the idea of cheaper medicines eventually brought themselves to having to adopt some of Labor's policies during the 2025 election. What we've seen as well is that there's really strong support for the outcomes of these investments. I had the joy of going down to the Bunbury Medicare urgent care clinic with then Labor candidate, my good friend Tabitha Dowding, to hear about the impact of what's happening as a result of these investments. What they told me as I was standing in their excellent Medicare urgent care clinic there in Eaton was that they estimate there have been some 10,000 diversions from their local emergency department. That's 10,000 people who didn't have to go through the public hospital system and 10,000 people who were able to get the urgent care they needed, and for those 10,000 people the only thing they needed was their Medicare card.

One of the other things we saw at the most recent election was that my great state of Western Australia sent another health professional here, to this place. I'm talking about the member for Bullwinkel, who becomes the 10th nurse to enter the Australian parliament. One of the first bills that the 10th nurse in the Australian parliament will vote for is our bill to make medicines cheaper. As the Prime Minister said in this chamber just a few hours ago, it's so often remarked that you never hear of prices going down; they only ever seem to go up. Isn't it amazing that in this bill we are actually seeing not just real cost-of-living relief but also real healthcare assistance and prices going down? And it's a significant reduction, a more than 20 per cent reduction, in the cost of medicines—medicines that people are prescribed by a doctor, that they need to keep themselves healthy, that they need to stay outside of the other parts of our health system.

Most of us need medications from time to time, and we are so fortunate in this country to have the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. I know that the PBS was there for my family. I was a kid with really chronic asthma and we purchased more than enough Becotide, Ventolin and other asthma medications and steroids to treat that asthma. Again, this was all supported by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. Again, I think of the kids and the parents who are dealing with asthma today. It will be cheaper for those things that they're going to be buying for years and years, as a result of these changes combined with our 60-day script changes, which have made a huge difference.

It did take those opposite six votes against cheaper medicines to see the error of their ways. There were six votes where they said that they wanted Australians to pay more for their medicines, but, while they were voting against it in the last term, it didn't discourage the Albanese government from doing more when it comes to cheaper medicines. I want to say that one of the people who have given us excellent advice on the importance of making sure that we make medicines cheaper for Australians is the member for Dobell, who's the only pharmacist in this parliament. She gives us excellent advice on making sure that we have the medicines that people need. It's an honour to sit with the member for Dobell, who is just slightly on the wrong side of the chamber these days.

The PBS has been a very long policy battle. Just as we had to fight through the last parliament, against vote after vote where those opposite chose to vote against cheaper medicines, Labor has been putting this case for a very long time. It was in 1944 that John Curtin realised, in the depths of World War II, that Australia needed to be able to get medicines to the entire Australian population, not just to those who could afford them. There was a desperate need for a range of antibiotic drugs to be given to the Australian people—things like penicillin—which would take pressure off other parts of the Australian economy and other parts of the Australian health system by people getting the medical assistance they needed.

Unsurprisingly, when Curtin put this forward in wartime, in 1944, before he went to sleep that night, the opposition had opposed it. There were two High Court challenges to Labor's first attempts to have a broad based pharmaceutical scheme that supported the Australian people. We had to go to two referendums and have one constitutional amendment, but the system that we have today is thanks to those who fought that fight, and I'm proud to be here as part of the Albanese Labor government, fighting the fight not just for Medicare but for cheaper medicines.

The reality is that the inability to afford the health care you need doesn't just result in worse health outcomes; it has a huge impact on people's social and economic outcomes. One of the things that we know about Medicare is that it completely changed the nature of bankruptcy in Australia for this reason. Prior to 1984, the leading cause of bankruptcy in Australia wasn't people overextending themselves, and it wasn't people having their businesses reach financial challenges. The leading cause of bankruptcy in Australia, up until 1984, was people who could not pay their medical bills. Medicare ended that overnight. It made sure that people could get the health care they needed, no matter what walk of life they came from, because we believe, on this side of the House, in universal health care.

In the extensive information that's given to us by the excellent Minister for Health and Ageing in putting this forward, there's a document that doesn't get enough attention in this building, which is the impact analysis statement. It was done by excellent officials, in this case, from the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, in collaboration with some great officials from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, in the Office of Impact Analysis—a shout out to them! That impact analysis tells us something about the policy benefits that come from this beyond just the cost-of-living relief. It says that this option that we are pursuing will initially reduce cost barriers for general patients to access PBS medicines. But it goes further, to say that there are other benefits over time. Those other benefits over time are: it will reduce the proportion of patients who are delaying or not filling their PBS scripts due to cost; it will reduce unavoidable hospitalisations from unmanaged conditions; it will reduce pressures on our aged care, disability and social welfare services; that it will slow the growth in chronic disease; and it will increase workforce participation because more people will be more healthy and able to attend work.

It does, as many have remarked, take us back to prices in 2004. That's a long time ago. It's back when Facebook was launching as 'The Facebook'; the Morley Blockbuster was doing a roaring trade, hiring out Freaky Friday amongst other movies; the minister who's here would probably have been on his Motorola flip phone, because he's a high-tech guy and would have had the latest tech; and Franz Ferdinand won the Triple J Hottest 100 with 'Take Me Out'. But it wasn't all good news back in 2004. There was, of course, the last episode of Cheez TV, which was very disappointing for some. But it was also a time when medicines cost just $25, and that's what we seek to do with this bill—to make sure that Australians can get the health care that they need at a reasonable price, giving real cost-of-living relief to millions of Australians.

We know that the measures we have taken so far have already saved Australians some $770 million. To save people money on something that is essential and to save them money on something that they often have no choice but to purchase is, I think, really smart policy. We saw that it benefited the Australian people over the last few years. We've got through the roadblocks put in our way by those in the opposition, and we want to go further with this bill.

I'll conclude my remarks by thanking all of the patient and social advocacy groups who've continued to help us advocate for these changes. They do make a real difference. I want to thank the Australian people, who voted to protect Medicare on 3 May. I want to thank the Australian people, who voted for cheaper medicines. I'm really proud that we repay that trust by coming in here and—one of the first things we do in the first months of this 48th Parliament—delivering on that promise for cheaper medicines for every Australian.

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