Zhi Soon (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to support the Health Legislation Amendment (Improved Medicare Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2025, and I am so glad to have another opportunity to speak on this government's healthcare agenda. Australians know that it was a Labor government that created Medicare, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and their predecessors. These programs help Australians pay for the health care they need in a world-class system. It is only Labor that stands to protect these programs and, in turn, strengthen Australians' access to reliable, affordable, quality health care. Part of strengthening our country's healthcare system is protecting the integrity of the Medicare program, supporting the Therapeutic Goods Administration to manage goods shortfalls and enforce legislation and enabling more effective preventive health measures to deter the take-up of tobacco and nicotine products.

The health legislation amendment bill before the parliament makes amendments to various pieces of legislation, including the National Health Act, the Health Insurance Act, the Human Services (Medicare) Act and the Dental Benefits Act, to respond to a range of issues that affect our health system as well as the administration and provision of our health benefits program. These changes come as a result of the Independent Review of Medicare Integrity and Compliance undertaken by Dr Pradeep Philip. The budget delivered by the government for financial year 2023-24 funded the establishment of the Medicare Integrity Taskforce to consider the findings of the Philip review and implement its recommendations.

The Philip review referred to the need for the integrity activities to identify and respond to any actors in the system who are unintentionally or dishonestly obtaining payments. Australians know that the overwhelming majority of our doctors and healthcare professionals are honest and hardworking and comply with the Medicare rules—general practitioners and specialists are pillars of the community in my electorate—but unfortunately there are a small proportion out there who don't act with the integrity that the Australian people expect. The government has a responsibility to act to ensure that community expectations are met in all aspects of our healthcare system. These amendments are necessary to protect the integrity and support the ongoing sustainability of the Medicare Benefits Schedule, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and the Child Dental Benefits Schedule and ensure patient safety is protected in all aspects of our healthcare system. Importantly, the measures introduced in the bill before the House will only directly impact the small percentage of practitioners and businesses engaged in noncompliance or fraudulent activities. The vast and overwhelming majority of practitioners and patients who do the right thing should notice no difference.

Overall, patients and practitioners can expect to benefit from better protected health benefit schemes that will provide more secure access to safe, quality healthcare services. Where genuine fraud exists in our healthcare system, it is our responsibility to investigate it and pursue it through the avenues available. At present, the legislation does not provide adequate paths for government to take action in this regard. The investigative powers in part IID of the Human Services (Medicare) Act apply inconsistently across all of the health benefits programs, and, as a result, investigators do not have access to the full suite of powers for numerous offences, with particular weaknesses in relation to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. There are also unnecessary restrictions on the ability to search with consent and on the retention of important evidence, which can frustrate efforts to pursue prosecution in some serious instances that are dealt with under the Criminal Code. This Labor government isn't just strengthening the PBS by cutting the price of prescriptions to a maximum of $25; we are strengthening it by ensuring that the small handful of people out there who abuse it can be held accountable.

Further, the bill amends the National Health Act to improve the efficiency of the process by which the minister may exercise discretion to approve a pharmacist, by combining two stages of the existing process, as well as restricting repeat applications, amongst other measures that will reduce administrative burden and support more timely access to medications and pharmaceutical benefits for Australian patients. While these legislative changes are hardly the flashiest part of the government's agenda in the healthcare space, they are both timely and important for the long-term sustainability of our healthcare programs. Overall, this suite of measures will collectively improve the power to detect, respond to, investigate, disclose and deter misconduct, fraud and non-compliance, and it will support the ability to conduct efficient, timely and effective compliance enforcement activities.

It is important for this government to ensure that the PBS is not being exploited by bad actors out there, but it's equally important to ensure that the department is able to respond to shortages in the pharmaceuticals that Australians need. This legislation does just that. This bill makes amendments to the Therapeutic Goods Act to enhance the department's capacity to manage the situation and alleviate the effects on patients by allowing approval of the import of substitutable products when it becomes clear that there is a looming shortage.

In recent years, we've seen the spread of vaping and e-cigarettes, including in concerning numbers among young Australians. The Minister for Health and Ageing, Disability and the National Disability Insurance Scheme has led the reform in this space, ensuring that we keep vaping products out of the hands of young people and stop the sale of illegal vapes. This legislation continues to move forward in this space, with measures to support compliance and enforcement activities undertaken in relation to vaping goods and to support existing legislation. Further, this legislation makes changes to the Public Health (Tobacco and Other Products) Act that remove the restrictions on the public service performance compliance enforcement activities as well as enable the refresh of health warnings on tobacco products and packaging to ensure these measures are effective in deterring the uptake of smoking and in the promotion of the cessation of smoking as an important preventative initiative. The specific provisions of the legislation will ensure this refresh can be undertaken without unnecessarily or excessively burdening business owners or retailers.

As I indicated before, these provisions are not flashy and probably won't get on the front page of the paper, but they are an important part of the government's wider health agenda, making sure that we can deliver the high-quality, affordable and accessible health care that Australians expect and need. When Labor came to government in 2022, it had never been harder or more expensive to see a doctor. This is why Australians put their faith in us to repair the health system. That continues in this term of the 48th Parliament. The Labor government did the hard work and, in the last term of parliament, made record investments in Medicare to restore bulk-billing rates for those who need it most and got results. Bulk-billing rates began to climb in every state and territory as a result of millions of additional trips to the GP that wouldn't have been possible without our tripling of the incentive. Now, the Albanese government is making the single largest investment in Medicare since its creation, with $8.5 billion to deliver more bulk-billing for all Australians, meaning that nine out of 10 GP visits will be bulk-billed by 2030 and that triple the number of practices will be bulk-billing all of their patients.

Only this side of the House respects the noble work that is done by our healthcare professionals and understands that nothing we do in this place can be implemented in the health system without them. It's why we're investing $662 million in the healthcare workforce, which will expand the largest GP training program in Australia's history. By 2028 we'll be funding the training of 2,000 new GP trainees every year alongside measures such as fee-free TAFE and the prac payment, which are helping more nurses and other healthcare professionals get qualified in our communities, to help develop our healthcare system further.

During the election campaign in 2022, Labor promised that we would open 50 medical urgent care clinics across the country. We overdelivered, with 87 clinics nationwide, and I look forward to being part of the delivery of a further 50, as we promised at the latest election. The clinics that serve my community in Bankstown and Carlton have filled a gap in our healthcare system and taken the pressure off the emergency departments and the hardworking staff at the Bankstown-Lidcombe and St George hospitals. Across the whole network, more than 1.8 million patients have been seen and have received fully bulk-billed care. That is an astounding number of people who didn't have to wait in an emergency department or, even worse, forgo medical treatment altogether.

I had the opportunity last week to speak on the National Health Amendment (Cheaper Medicines) Bill 2025, and I'm so glad to be able to reiterate to the House the government's fantastic achievements in this space. In 2023 we cut the cost of PBS prescriptions from $42.50 to $30, and the legislation that passed the House last week will cut them from $31.50 to just $25 as well as maintain the $7.70 freeze for pensioners and concession card holders in our communities. The reduction in cost from the government is a cut of more than 20 per cent to the maximum cost of a script, which will save Australians a further $200 million each year, and the government's initiative to make 300 medicines available on 60-day prescriptions and lower the PBS safety net threshold will make sure Australian patients save more than a billion dollars on the cost of their scripts thanks to this government's commitment to making medicines cheaper. This is what tangible cost-of-living relief for Australians looks like, as we continue to put downward pressure on inflation while supporting our healthcare system.

The Albanese Labor government has delivered a significant boost for public hospital funding, with $1.8 billion invested on 1 July this year, including $408 million for hospitals in my state of New South Wales. The agreement means Australians will benefit from better funded hospitals—like the one I visited in Bankstown on Friday last week—shorter waiting times in emergency departments and shorter waitlists as the government continues to work in partnership with the states and territories to deliver a five-year funding agreement for public hospitals. This is in stark contrast to those opposite, who cut $50 billion from public hospitals under the stewardship of the former leader of the opposition and member for Dickson.

As I said, this government's health agenda is substantial. It covers the length and breadth of the portfolio. While the changes made by the Health Legislation Amendment (Improved Medicare Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2025 might not get the headlines, they are no less important as we deliver the healthcare system that Australians deserve and expect. It is this government that continues to invest in Medicare, it is this government that continues to invest in the PBS, and it is this government that continues to invest in our healthcare workforce to make our healthcare system one of the best in the world. I commend this bill to the House and look forward to continuing to support our government's agenda in the health space in order to make sure it continues to remain affordable, of the highest quality and in line with what our communities expect to make sure that we have healthy Australians of all ages for generations to come.

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