Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia has a world-class health system. Despite its challenges, if you're sick or injured you wouldn't want to be anywhere else, Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme are some of the great social reforms of our time, ensuring that health care is available according to your need, not your ability to pay. Consequently, our population health is among the best in the world.

This Labor government has strengthened Medicare and the PBS because we know how important it is. We funded an increase in bulk-billing that has already seen an increase of more than four per cent in Boothby after a decade of frozen MBS under those opposite. We've committed to increasing bulk-billing to 90 per cent by 2030, and we introduced a raft of measures to make medications cheaper, making the safety net more available, reducing the cost of PBS medications, introducing 60-day scripts and lowering the maximum PBS co-payment to $25—the same price as in 2024. We've also made health care more accessible by introducing walk-in, bulk-billed, urgent care clinics across the country. We established endometriosis clinics and funded a groundbreaking women's health package including longer MBS items for women's health assessments. We've established children's hubs—with one coming in Boothby by the end of the year—and Medicare mental health clinics. We're establishing a national 1800 Medicare helpline. Medicare is core business for Labor. Health care matters to our Australian way of life, and this Labor government is here for all Australians.