Matt Smith (Leichhardt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to take you back to 1998. I was playing in Connecticut, took an elbow to the face, and my bottom lip was torn halfway off. A few dozen stitches later and I was back in my dorm room with a sore face, a new scar and a new story, but the team I was playing for were on the hook for something like $50,000. In 2019, I had a stroke on a football field. I had a few days in hospital, rehab, ECGs, MRIs, CT scans and all the follow-ups with neurologists, cardiologists, OTs and physios—the works. Do you know what that cost me? That's right—Medicare card! But I don't need to hold up a Medicare card, because every single Australia knows what it looks like. It was Wattle Day yesterday, the plant that gave us our national colours—and that is fitting, because the Medicare card is green like our wattle. But knowing the Labor government will always protect and expand Medicare, well, that is gold!

The Albanese Labor government is investing $8.5 billion into Medicare to deliver an additional 18 million bulk-billed GP visits per year. There have been 50 Medicare urgent care clinics promised, 87 delivered, with another 50 to come, including one in the northern suburbs of Cairns. The urgent care clinic in south Cairns has seen tens of thousands of people, getting them in, getting them out and getting them back home where they want to be, taking the pressure off hospitals. Medicine is cheaper—and it's going to get better. On 1 January, all Australians will be able to get PBS medicines at 2004 prices: $25. Prices are going backwards; it's unheard of. (Time expired)

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