Alison Penfold (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Investment in Medicare is always welcome. I'm hopeful that the additional bulk-billing incentive payments will directly benefit Lyne constituents, who have seen a serious decline in bulk billing availability in the last four years. I look forward to hearing from Lyne locals that it has hit the ground. But praise has not been universal. General practice clinics and owners are already disclosing publicly that they will not be signing up to the incentives. Why?

Firstly, signing up to the program is prohibitively time consuming and complex, and most GPs and practice managers—certainly in regional Australia—are already incredibly busy and do not have the time to do the paperwork. Secondly, the incentives are not sufficient to offset the soaring operational costs of running a clinic under Labor's skyrocketing energy prices. To enable 100 per cent bulk billing, many GPs insist that, if they were to take part in the program, their practice would lose hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, which would ultimately jeopardise the viability of keeping the practice open.

I want constituents to have access to no-appointment-necessary bulk-billed after-hours care. An urgent care clinic in Taree would complement a state funded one, the Forster-Tuncurry health facility that my state colleague, the member for Myall Lakes, has successfully obtained funding for, after the Minns government axed funding for a public hospital.

The mover of this motion, the member for Deakin, references a number of other policies that the government has undertaken to strengthen Medicare, including opening 90 Medicare Urgent Care Clinics across the country, with 47 more on the way. One would think this would be good news for my electorate. Lyne is, after all, the oldest electorate and one of the poorest in the country, so surely it should be on the list to receive a federally funded urgent care clinic. Well, it's not. Surely, it is one of the 47 that is on the list to be delivered down the track. Well, it's not. Out of the 137 urgent care clinics the government will operate, not one falls within the borders of my electorate. My electorate and my constituents sit squarely in the middle of a yawning service gap that exists between Coffs Harbour and Newcastle, and despite my many calls to the minister to work with me to fix this gap and deliver an urgent care clinic in the Lyne electorate, I've been generally knocked back. My request should not be of any surprise to the government. During the election I called for an urgent care clinic in Taree. Labor ran a candidate against me, so why didn't Labor match my commitment and budget for it during the election, as they did in the many others they are delivering? I note that an urgent care clinic that was committed to in Maitland will benefit many of my constituents and I'm grateful to the government for this commitment, but Maitland is almost two hours away, too far for the people of Taree and Forster and the Mid North Coast to access.

The member for Deakin, when moving this motion, also spruiked the government's lowering of the maximum cost of Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme listed medicines. And while we all hope this initiative will land in the pockets of hardworking Australians, increasingly we are seeing these savings washed away by other surging price rises created by this government's policies.

Just last Friday I received a call from a constituent who had undergone a pathology test and only after the fact was told an invoice would be sent to him. This is another policy that was brought in by the Albanese government, but curiously they are not spruiking this one, which runs completely counter to their misleading narrative that they are delivering cheaper and more accessible health care. This formerly free health service is no longer, thanks to the government placing tighter restrictions on who can get Medicare funded vitamin B12 and urine specimen testing. This gentleman who contacted my office could not believe that the Prime Minister, who theatrically waved his Medicare card and promised on no fewer than 71 occasions—throughout the election campaign and since—that all you need is your Medicare card, not your credit card, was doing the exact opposite when it came to the pathology. This decision, as my constituent warned, will deter many Australians from doing clinical tests, potentially creating more complex and expensive health problems down the track. He said, 'If I'd been made aware of the cost prior to the test then I don't think I would have had it.'

Health is one of the major concerns on the mind of Lyne residents—again, the oldest electorate and one of the poorest in the country. We feel we're missing out on our fair of investment in local health services under this government. I'm here to work constructively with whomever is in government to support the health needs of Lyne communities.

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