Zaneta Mascarenhas (Swan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Managing health, caring for our children and supporting loved ones through illness or ageing is difficult enough. After a year of neglect of the healthcare system, Australians were getting used to the idea that wealth could determine access to something as basic as seeing a GP. That's not what Medicare was created for. In my first term, my community told me that bulk-billing was disappearing and that seeing their local GP was challenging. I'm proud to say that this government is turning that around and is deliberately investing in Medicare.

Last year, in November, bulk-billing incentives were expanded. GPs now receive funding for every patient they bulk-bill, not just children and concession cardholders. Also, practices that choose to bulk-bill every patient receive additional incentives, and we are seeing more clinics becoming fully bulk-billed clinics. We're also making medicines affordable. Women were paying $380 for contraceptives like Yaz, Yasmin and Slinda before they were listed on the PBS. Now it's $25 a script. In just one year, over 600,000 women have saved more than $70 million.

The thing that makes this job really rewarding is when a mum at a barbecue says across the aisle, 'Thank you.' That's what we're trying to do: change lives for women.

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