Zhi Soon (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Back in 2022, before this government was elected, people in my community and many others were struggling to afford to pay for their medications. Back then, a PBS prescription cost $42.50. For a script that was filled monthly, that was many hundreds of dollars a year annually. But since then, this government, this Albanese Labor government, has acted to address it with two cuts to the cost of PBS prescriptions. Australians are paying only $25 per script. That same monthly refill is now $200 cheaper over the course of the year. Importantly, the freeze for pensioners and concession card holders at just $7.70 has been extended to the year 2030. Additionally, the government has listed hundreds of medicines on the PBS over the last 3½ years, including treatments for prostate, breast and lung cancers, bringing medical breakthroughs within the financial reach of Australian patients. This is an agenda for the PBS that is working, and Australians are seeing the benefits to the tune of $1.7 billion saved nationwide, including $7.8 million in my own electorate of Banks.

While Labor created the PBS, our agenda for Australia's health goes beyond access to medications. We are also investing in the nation's other great healthcare program: Medicare. During the last term of parliament, the government tripled the bulk-billing incentive for those in our communities who need access to a GP the most and saw the results of this. Now the government has delivered on its commitment to make the largest investment in Medicare since it was created and extended the bulk-billing incentive to every Australian for the first time to make sure that 90 per cent of GP visits are bulk-billed by the year 2030. In my electorate alone, 18 GP clinics indicated that they were shifting over to becoming fully bulk-billing clinics, bulk-billing every single patient.

With the launch of 1800MEDICARE, Australians have access to a 24/7 telehealth service when they need help after hours. When Australians need help that requires a little bit more than a standard GP consultation can provide—urgent but not life-threatening—they can turn to the government's network of fully bulk-billed Medicare urgent care clinics, including the clinics at Bankstown and Carlton that service the people of my electorate. At every turn those opposite have tried to talk down these clinics, unfortunately, but the results speak for themselves. In October last year we saw the two millionth visit to an urgent care clinic. Given that a majority of visits have either been on weekends or after 5 pm on a weekday, when GP clinics are typically closed, this is literally hundreds of thousands of patients who would otherwise have ended up in a hospital emergency department or, worse, not getting any care at all. They're getting the support and care they need in a more appropriate setting and taking the pressure off our hospitals.

While urgent care clinics are taking the pressure off our hospitals, we still need to make sure we are providing the comprehensive investment in our hospitals and healthcare system that Australians need. At the election we promised to put back every dollar those opposite ripped out of our healthcare system when they were in government, and last year the government delivered $1.8 billion in funding for hospitals, including $407 million for hospitals in my home state of New South Wales. Last Friday we saw the next step in this investment, with a historic deal to contribute record funding to public hospitals through another $25 billion across every state and territory in our great country. This investment in our public hospitals will improve care, cut waiting times and tackle ambulance ramping. It is a demonstration of what is possible when the government of the day is serious about health care.

To make sure that those hospitals and the rest of our healthcare system have the staff they need to provide the high-quality care that every single Australian deserves, we are investing in our healthcare workforce as well, with an extra 17,000 doctors entering the system in the last two years. This is the biggest growth out of any time in the past decade.

Finally, this government recognises that for too long many people in our community have not had their health needs taken seriously, principally among them Australian women. This Labor government is changing that with half a billion dollars of investment. We've opened 22 endometriosis and pelvic pain clinics and are in the process of opening 11 more across the country. We're making longer GP consultations possible for women experiencing menopause, and we're making both short-term and long-term contraceptives more affordable and accessible, making sure we're supporting women's health care at every single stage.

In closing, this government took an ambitious agenda to the Australian people in May last year, and we are delivering on those promises that we made, be it investing in bulk-billing or cutting the cost of PBS medications—not for the first time, but the second—or making changes in the legislation before this House to improve access to medication and to utilise the skills of our healthcare workforce. It is only this side of the House, this Albanese Labor government, who will continue to be busy fighting for the Australian people, including in my great electorate of Banks.

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