Anne Urquhart (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the National Health Amendment (Cheaper Medicines) Bill 2025. As we know, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme is a pillar of Australian health care. It's life-changing and life-saving for Australians. Each of us benefits from this universal and inclusive scheme. It was the Curtin Labor government that first produced the Pharmaceutical Benefits Act in 1944 to provide free medicines to all Australians. It was the Chifley Labor government that implemented the first PBS, in 1948, providing free medicines for pensioners and a select list of life-saving drugs for the general public. Since then, it has been Labor governments that have built the PBS as a critical part of accessible healthcare for all Australians. We know the task of implementing big nation-building reforms always falls to Labor. It's Labor that is focused on improving social and economic outcomes for workers, families and vulnerable Australians. We're the party of reform, prioritising equity, inclusion and affordability. With this legislation, the Albanese Labor government will make cheaper medicines even cheaper, with a script to cost Australians no more than $25 under the PBS.

This bill implements the government's 2025 election commitments to reduce the PBS general patient co-payment from $31.60 to $25. The last time that PBS medicines cost no more than $25 was, as we have heard many times, in 2004. Labor's health policies are very important to Tasmanians. Tasmania still ranks poorly compared with other Australian states and territories on many health issues. Tasmania has the nation's highest prevalence rates for most chronic conditions, including arthritis, back problems, cancer, osteoporosis, and heart, stroke and vascular disease. Tasmanians deserve better. They deserve better health policies and access to health services. It's crucial that the newly-elected state government take every opportunity to focus on improving health outcomes for our communities.

The federal government is focused on that task and playing its part. In 2025-26, the Australian government will deliver $750 million in funding to Tasmanian state-run public hospitals. That's an additional $93 million, or a 14 per cent increase in federal funding. A further $120 million in federal funding will go towards the Northern Heart Centre at the Launceston General Hospital. We've also funded additional aged-care beds, birthing services and hospice care, and, for every Tasmanian, we are strengthening Medicare and expanding bulk-billing. This is so important because bulk-billing rates in Tasmania have been lower than in the rest of Australia. But we are turning that around; we are seeing that percentage increase. We are also putting in place programs that deliver more doctors, more nurses and more endorsed midwives into our health system.

Of course we have delivered, in Tasmania, five very successful Medicare urgent care clinics, and there are more to come. In Devonport, in my electorate of Braddon, the Medicare urgent care centre has delivered over 25,000 bulk-billed consultations, and over 100,000 bulk-billed Medicare urgent care clinic consultations have been delivered right across the state. That is astounding. Tenders have now opened for three new Tasmanian Medicare urgent care clinics, including one in Burnie, which is also in my electorate, and I really look forward to that tender being awarded and that urgent care clinic becoming operational to provide that service at the other end of the coast from where that Devonport one is.

Now, having already slashed the cost of medicines during our first term of government, we are going even further. We've already delivered more free and cheaper medicines sooner, with a 25 per cent reduction in the number of scripts that a patient must fill before the PBS safety net kicks in; the largest cut to the cost of medicines in the history of the PBS, with the maximum cost of a script falling to $30 from $42.50; 60-day prescriptions, saving time and money for millions of Australians with an ongoing health condition—and that has been a real game changer for many people in my community; a freeze on the cost of PBS medicines, with co-payments not rising with inflation, for all Australians for the first time in 25 years, and a five-year freeze on the cost of PBS medicines for pensioners and other Commonwealth concession card holders, so that, if you have a concession card, the most you will pay is $7.70.

Making medicines cheaper is not just good for your health; it's a tangible way that we are helping with the cost of living, and this will help many thousands of people that I represent in my home state of Tasmania. The federal government's cheaper medicines policies have already delivered over $40 million in savings for Tasmanians and over $8 million to the residents of my electorate of Braddon.

With the bill before us today, these savings will grow. Four out of five PBS medicines will become cheaper from 1 July 2026, which will save Australians over $200 million each year. That is a real, tangible help to the budgets of all Australians. This bill makes it clear: Labor will always stand up for the PBS and for affordable, accessible, universal Australian health care.

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