Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bendigo for her question. Victorians know there's a healthy rivalry between Bendigo and Ballarat. But what there's not a rivalry about, a fact that both of us know, is just how important Medicare and bulk-billing are to our regional communities. When you're sick and you need to see a doctor, it shouldn't be a struggle. It is why this government is making the single largest investment in Medicare since its creation over 40 years ago, with $8.5 billion that is delivering more bulk-billing and more doctors across Australia.

For the first time, bulk-billing incentives will be paid to GPs for every patient that they bulk-bill, and we're delivering an additional 18 million bulk-billed GP visits each year. Medicare payments in regional bulk-billing practices will be double what they are now. This investment is making a real difference across the whole of the country, but, in our regions in particular, it is an absolute game changer. This investment is making a difference. In my own electorate, more GP clinics are now fully bulk-billed. In fact, 18 clinics have changed from mixed billing to bulk-billing because of the changes of this government. That includes Q1 Medical in Lucas, the Eureka medical centre in Ballarat and Springs Medical in Daylesford and Trentham—and they've also got a practice in Kyneton, in the member for Bendigo's electorate. The members for Flynn in Queensland and Cowper in the mid north coast of New South Wales are seeing 16 clinics in their electorate move from mixed billing to bulk-billing. So we know that more than 1,000 GP clinics have now taken up the challenge to actually bulk-bill 100 per cent of their patients. Almost 800 of these are in regional and remote communities. It's all part of our commitment to ensure nine out of 10 GP visits will be bulk-billed by 2030.

Compare that, of course, to what those opposite did when they were in government. We saw in the 2014 cut-and-slash budget, of course, $50 billion cut from public hospitals and attempts to put on increased co-payments to make medicines more expensive. They wanted to put a co-payment on every single emergency visit, and then what they also wanted to do was bake in a $7 and then a $20 GP tax. They then, because they couldn't get that through the Senate, decided to freeze the Medicare rebate—not just for two years but, under the Leader of the Opposition's watch, for four years. That did significant damage to bulk-billing rates and to our healthcare system. After that decade of appalling neglect of our healthcare system—the wrecking of Medicare—this government is getting on with the job of actually restoring bulk-billing and restoring Medicare. That benefits regional Australia.

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