Rowan Holzberger (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. How is the Albanese Labor government strengthening Medicare while easing cost-of-living pressures for Australians?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Forde for his question. Indeed, he understands and is proud of the fact that Labor created Medicare. It's also a fact that Labor created the PBS. Of course, our Labor government is very much focused on strengthening both while delivering real cost-of-living relief. In our first term, we brought down the cost of a PBS script from $42 to $30. That was the first time that PBS scripts had actually been lowered. Ever since it was introduced, they'd gone up—every now and again, over the years—so that they reached that point. We reduced it from $42 to $30, consistent with the policy that we took to the 2022 election. Indeed, that was the first reduction in the cost of medicines in eight decades—promised and then delivered. But we know that there is more work to do. So, at this election, after I addressed the big Pharmacy Guild conference—the first Prime Minister to do so—we promised to slash the cost of a PBS script to just $25. But, importantly as well, we have frozen the cost for concession cardholders to just $7.70 for the rest of the decade, making PBS medicines, at $25, the cheapest they have been since 2004.

Bulk-billing is, of course, at the heart of Medicare, and it's also at the heart of our plans to ease the cost of living, so we've tripled the bulk-billing incentive first. We did it for concession cardholders, and we are now doing it for all Australians. We are investing $8½ billion to cover all 26 million Australians. In addition to that, we are delivering 50 additional Medicare urgent care clinics, meaning there'll be a network of some 137 clinics that have already serviced 1.6 million Australians. In addition to that, we're establishing 1800MEDICARE, a 24/7 health advice and bulk-billing hotline.

Medicare is a Labor legacy. It is central to what makes us the best country on earth. Our government will strengthen Medicare, and we will defend it so that all Australians can get the high-quality health care that they deserve, making an enormous difference to not only the health but also the living standards of Australians.