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

Thanks to the member for Banks. He and I visited the health hub at Narwee only a few weeks ago. I'm delighted to say that the health hub has registered as a bulk-billing practice for Medicare—bulk-billing all of their patients, all of the time. As well as receiving bulk-billing payments for all of their patients, including those without a concession card, for the first time, that practice will also receive an additional payment of 12½ per cent on top of their Medicare income, because they are 100 per cent bulk-billing. The health hub is just one of 18 clinics in the Banks electorate who are now 100 per cent bulk-billing clinics. Almost 2,800 practices have now registered as 100 per cent bulk-billing clinics. That number includes well over 1,000 who, last month, were charging gap fees but, this month, are bulk-billing all of their patients, all of the time. And that number is increasing every single day.

For Labor, for the member for Banks and for everyone on this side of the House, that matters, because, for Labor, bulk-billing is the beating heart of Medicare. That is why, back in 2023, we tripled the bulk-billing incentive paid for bulk-billing concession card holders, pensioners and kids, turning that bulk-billing rate around, which now sits comfortably at over 90 per cent. It's why we delivered the three biggest general increases to the Medicare rebate since Paul Keating was Prime Minister, easing the squeeze after the Liberal Party's Medicare freeze, and it's why we delivered this record investment this month.

Unapologetically, some of our biggest commitments at the last two elections, from this prime minister, have been to deliver a stronger Medicare, and we're delivering on every single one of those commitments. We're delivering more bulk-billing for more patients more of the time. We're delivering more urgent care clinics—47 of which will open over the next several weeks. We're delivering more doctors, including medical school places, which the education minister talked about that earlier today. And we're delivering even cheaper medicines again, on 1 January.

These are all essential after the decade of cuts and neglect, which the Leader of the Opposition interjects about time and time again—the Leader of the Opposition who, as health minister, distinguished herself as the only health minister in history never to increase the Medicare rebate once. A big doughnut from the Leader of the Opposition—a health minister who extended Peter Dutton's Medicare freeze from two years to six years. It's no wonder the Australian people know who to trust with Medicare, and it's not those opposite.

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