Carina Garland (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

I also really want to thank my colleague the member for Reid for bringing this very important matter to the House today. Indeed, like the member for Reid's, my electorate of Chisholm has thousands of people in my community that are dependent on accessing Medicare bulk-billing services. Instilled in me from a very young age—with a GP for a father and a nurse for a mother, who ran their own medical practice—was the importance of everyone in our community being able to access health care.

When I speak about Medicare bulk-billing services, I'm speaking about pensioners, concession-card holders and families with children who benefited from our initial $8.5 billion investment in Medicare. I think, when I speak about Medicare bulk-billing services, about every Australian worker in my electorate who, since 1 November last year, has also benefited from Labor's further investment in Medicare bulk-billing. They include the more than 4,000 retail assistants, the 1,500 registered nurses and the many thousands of teachers, carers and aged-care workers who live in my electorate.

On this side of the House, we know that Australians don't hope to get sick at all—none of us do. And, when you do get sick, you shouldn't think about how you're going to pay for being sick, and what the impact of going without income may be.

I'm really proud to be part of a government that values Medicare, and we know that, when you value something, you invest in it. So I'm really pleased that we have been investing significantly and consistently in Medicare. Whether it's through the Albanese Labor government's record investment to strengthen Medicare with more bulk-billing, or through cheaper medicines, we're continuing to deliver high-quality, low-cost health care for Australians.

It should be no surprise to anyone that, when you triple the bulk-billing incentive, you create the conditions that enable medical practices to deliver increased bulk-billing services. That's precisely what we've seen happening on the ground. This includes more than 1,400 mixed-billing practices across Australia switching to bulk-billing.

The delivery of bulk-billing services across Australia, throughout Victoria and in my electorate of Chisholm has increased by every measure. That means that there are more than 3,800 bulk-billing practices across the country, including more than a thousand in Victoria and 31 bulk-billing practices in my electorate of Chisholm. We've seen that increase in practices leading to an increase in bulk-billing rates since our investment in Medicare, resulting in real and practical cost-of-living relief for Australians right across the country.

This is the kind of real help Australians are looking for and our government is providing. Minister Butler said that Labor built Medicare and we are strengthening it for all Australians. This is a really important mission that we have in government, and we will continue to keep our focus on investing in health care.

As I mentioned, we tripled the bulk-billing incentive in 2023 and again further stepped up to invest in Medicare and strengthen it by expanding that incentive from November last year. Our incentives are helping more people see the GP for free and delivering the biggest boost to Medicare ever. The 31 Medicare bulk-billing practices in my electorate of Chisholm are now bulk-billing all their patients all the time. Almost 50 per cent of GPs in my electorate are now in bulk-billing practices. I'm really proud of the fact that that bulk-billing rate has increased since I was first elected in May 2022. I am really pleased that the bulk-billing rate in my electorate sits at 80 per cent. This is a significant achievement and it's something that I'm really pleased to have been able to deliver for my community in government. I really want to thank all of those general practitioners and the staff in those practices for the important work that they do every day, keeping our community healthy.

One of the other significant ways that we've invested in Medicare bulk-billing is through investing in our Medicare urgent care clinics. We've got a Mount Waverley urgent care clinic which opened on 24 September, and we've had over 21,700 presentations in that time, which has made an enormous difference to people in our community, and I hear positive feedback all the time from people in my electorate.

Labor built Medicare. We will always do what we can to defend it and to strengthen it so everyone in our communities can get the health care they need when they need it. I'm proud to speak on this motion today.

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