Cameron Caldwell (Fadden, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

For this particular motion today, honestly, I suspect that the member has gone straight to the Labor Party talking points, pressed print and gone, 'Let's talk about that today.' There's been no real thought, no real effort to design something that might appear to be genuine. What we've seen today is nothing more than just a spit-out of the Labor talking points. I say that because it's so limited in what they actually write in these things.

The first thing that I wanted to pick up on is the effort by this Labor government to only talk about the cost of medicines back in 2004. Now, it's great that the copayment has been reduced to $25. They all went out and did videos talking about what things were like in 2004. Well, I'll tell you what life was like in 2004. You could buy a bottle of milk for $2.80, and you could buy a loaf of bread for about $2.50. Now, sadly, the Labor government has lost control of the budget so badly that the cost-of-living pressures that Australians are facing have skyrocketed under this government, and the cost of those everyday essentials has now completely eroded any gain that they think they might have been able to get under this government from their PBS medicine discount. That's life under Labor. You're feeling poorer every payday because life costs more. Then they give you a drip feed of a little corflute slogan that they're going to wheel out in an election, but it doesn't touch the sides in reality.

Let me talk about bulk-billing, because Labor continue to bang on about bulk-billing, but sadly their track record since they came to office in 2024 is utterly appalling. We heard the member for Riverina talk about the bulk-billing rates having dropped from 88 per cent to 77 per cent under this government. What that looks like in reality is that, in my electorate of Fadden, in the year of 2021-22 it was 1.594 million visits. That fell under this Labor government, under this minister for health and ageing and under this prime minister by 353,000 visits to the point where in 2023-24 it was down to 1.2 million visits. It's an 11 per cent reduction in bulk-billing. That's what's happened and that's what patients are dealing with in my electorate. And in fact that's what they're dealing with all over Australia. The patient experience goes beyond what Labor puts in their talking points and what they put in their motions to speak to here in this place.

The other problem that we've seriously encountered as a community is the out-of-pocket expenses that keep rising. I was just talking to the member for Moncrieff, who also acts as the shadow minister for youth, and the out-of-pocket expenses are disproportionately hurting those that can least afford it, including young Australians. As the shadow assistant minister for mental health, I am acutely aware of the pain that's being caused to younger Australians, who don't feel like they can go and get a GP visit when they need it. The average out-of-pocket GP costs have reached a historic high of more than $50—an eight per cent jump in just one year. What that means is that Australians are avoiding about 10,000 GP visits every single day.

Whilst Labor talk to their talking points and talk a big game on Medicare and bulk-billing, the real-life, lived experience in our communities is that people are not getting in to see GPs when they need to, and, when they do, they have to cough up hundreds of dollars upfront, with massive out-of-pocket expenses. If this is what Labor think is their custodianship of the health system, if Labor think that they are the standard-bearers based on this track record, they should be ashamed. Australians deserve better. We all need to get Medicare health and other services at the price that we can afford and in the places we need them, and that includes Taree.

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