Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

Thanks to the member for Menzies, who is already such a strong advocate of our push to increase rates of bulk-billing not just in his part of Melbourne but right across Australia.

Our first investments are already turning around bulk-billing for concession card holders and kids. That rate now sits above 92 per cent, with almost seven million additional free visits to the GP every year as a result of our investment to triple the bulk-billing incentive for those Australians back in 2023. But bulk-billing is still too low for Australians who don't have a concession card. That's why we're going to roll out bulk-billing incentives for those Australians for the first time from 1 November this year.

Bulk-billing, as we know, was in freefall when we came to government, and it's no mystery why. After the Abbott government failed to get their GP tax through the Senate, of course they decided instead to freeze the Medicare rebate—and the backlash rightly was immense, absolutely immense. The health minister at the time, Mr Dutton, was shelved as health minister after barely two years in the job and replaced by the Leader of the Opposition. Perhaps the Leader of the Opposition thought of trying to find a way out of the utter mess left by that disastrous Dutton horror budget or, to paraphrase that famous speech she gave to the LNP a couple of weeks ago, perhaps instead she thought of Peter often as she walked the corridors of the parliament as the new health minister.

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