Jerome Laxale (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's been nearly a month since Medicare's super Saturday, and it's been a bumper month of bulk-billing in Bennelong. Super Saturday, of course, was 1 November, when Labor's $8.5 billion investment into bulk-billing came into force. And get this—in October, Healthdirect showed that Bennelong had nine fully bulk-billing practices, and today I can report to the House that we now have 14 fully bulk-billing practices in Bennelong. From Eastwood to West Ryde, Marsfield to Macquarie Park, Medicare card holders in Bennelong are now even more able to see their doctor without a fee.

In exciting news, many of these 14 clinics made the switch from fee-paying to fully bulk-billing. Here is one example. In October, the Myhealth clinic at Top Ryde charged a $35 gap fee for patients to see a GP, but, because of our record investments into Medicare, they went fully bulk-billing from 1 November. Since then, they've seen 6,000 patients who didn't have to pay a fee to see their GP; they were all fully bulk-billed. Under the Liberals, bulk-billing was on life support. They froze rebates and slashed billions of dollars from hospitals. As Kendrick Lamar would say, those Liberals—they not like us. Labor created Medicare, Labor protects Medicare and Labor will always strengthen Medicare.

See this speech in context