Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

My constituents, like all Australians, treat health care and access to Medicare as a major priority. During the election campaign, Prime Minister Albanese promised on over 70 occasions that Australians would be able to see their doctor with nothing more than a Medicare card, but recently published Medicare data shows that bulk billing nationally stands at 77.6 per cent—unimproved from a year ago.

The PM isn't fooling anyone in my electorate of O'Connor, where bulk-billing rates have dropped to 76.1 per cent. Under the previous coalition government, O'Connor's bulk-billing rates were 84.4 per cent, which means bulk-billing rates have actually dropped 8.7 per cent under Labor in my electorate. In 2022, the average out-of-pocket cost for a visit to the doctor in O'Connor was $43.19. This year's Cleanbill Blue report states that the average out-of-pocket cost for someone visiting a GP in O'Connor is now at $45.41. That's an increase of five per cent.

Last week's West Australian published an article headlined '$8.5 billion bulk-bill baulk'. It stated that, despite the much-lauded commencement of bulk-billing reform, figures across Perth had failed to improve. Citing the government's official health website, Healthdirect, the West found that only two out of 30 GP clinics fully bulk-billed in each of the large Perth metropolitan centres, Joondalup and Midland. In Fremantle and Mandurah, only five out of a collective 60 clinics advertised that they fully bulk-billed.

I conducted a quick search for my electorate. The city of Albany, with a population of 40,000, has only one practice advertised as fully bulk-billed. In Esperance, with a population of 17,000, none of the GP practices contacted had taken up the fully bulk-billing option, and only one clinic indicated that they were open to doing so in the future. On the plus side, a constituent from Wagin, with a population of 1,800, responded that their town's only GP was now fully bulk-billing.

Unfortunately, for many of our O'Connor towns there is no local doctor. Increasingly it has fallen to local government authorities to secure and sustain medical services for their residents. In 2023 the Wheatbelt shire of Quairading made national headlines when they offered a package of $1 million to secure a GP. On top of a base salary, the shire was providing a four-bedroom house and covering all running costs at the clinic. Shire president Peter Smith told the West Australian:

If we don't have a doctor, we don't have a medical clinic … Then we won't have a hospital … we won't have a chemist … and so the demise will continue.

This mantra is echoed by many of the 47 regional shires across O'Connor and was reiterated in the inquiry into local government sustainability currently being conducted by the House Standing Committee on Regional Development, Infrastructure and Transport. In the committee's interim report, the chair of the committee, the member for Solomon, said— (Time expired)

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