Mary Aldred (Monash, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a really important issue for Australia and a really important issue for regional Australia. I'm pleased to have the opportunity to focus on a number of priorities for my local electorate of Monash. Whether it's in the Latrobe Valley at Latrobe Regional Hospital, where I've previously served on the board—which does a great job under very stretched resources—or at South Gippsland Hospital in Foster or Leongatha, or at West Gippsland Hospital, which is absolutely bursting at the seams, our health services and facilities in the Monash electorate deserve far better. This flows through to the affordability and availability of GPs in our local area, many of whom do an incredible job. Many of those I speak to are exhausted. They take their duty of care to all of their patients, and to the broader community, very seriously. But we cannot ignore the fact that bulk-billing rates under this government are getting worse, not better.

On the West Gippsland Hospital—I want to make this point because it does address broader health concerns within the community, not just at a GP level but more broadly. I want to take the opportunity to address the shocking incident only a few days ago of a 91-year-old grandmother, Lois Casboult, a resident of Drouin in my electorate, who broke her pelvis and had a brain bleed. An ambulance was called. They are so stretched to capacity because of the Victorian Labor government's complete mismanagement of our health system that, instead of them taking her for a nine-minute drive to West Gippsland Hospital, her daughter had to come and pick her up and take her. That is the sort of thing we are seeing not just in my community but in regional communities Australia-wide, particularly in Victoria, where the Victorian Labor government has really done a lot to hurt health outcomes across our community.

We've had the Prime Minister write a letter to state premiers in the last week or so, effectively saying, 'Please stop spending money on public health', as if people can stop getting sick or avoid going to emergency. We have a GP shortfall. We have GPs trying their best under very, very hard circumstances to do all that they can. But the reality is, at a state and federal level, our health services are not keeping pace with demand. Patients, particularly in regional Australia, are not getting the care and attention they deserve.

Our healthcare workers—our doctors, our nurses—are absolutely magnificent people. I was at a citizenship ceremony at Baw Baw Shire only a few weeks ago, where 12 of our new citizens were doctors who work at the West Gippsland Hospital. They are part of the fabric of our community, but they are being sorely let down by this Labor government. When you raise affordability, when you raise availability, the Prime Minister's response is, 'All you need is your Medicare card, not your credit card', and that's just blatantly not true. I've got people coming up to me at listening posts and mobile offices saying that it's never been more expensive to see a doctor. For serious ailments they're waiting weeks to get in to see their GP, in many cases, and, of course, that is proliferating other comorbidities and other health ailments they have.

I passionately believe that your postcode shouldn't determine your potential. I passionately believe that regional Australians should not be treated like second-class citizens in accessing the health care that they deserve and that they need. This federal Labor government is sorely letting them down. The Prime Minister needs to do better on this. The health minister needs to do better on this.

I want to commend my state Liberal colleague Wayne Farnham, the member for Narracan, for standing up and doing everything he can to fight for a new West Gippsland hospital. I'll work with him and anyone else that wants to improve regional health outcomes.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bowman for bringing this motion, as I always enjoy the opportunity to talk about health care and what our government is doing for this very important Australian institution called Medicare.

I've been working in health care now for half a century—in fact, over half a century. Health care is changing in Australia, as it has done over the many decades I've been working in the industry. It is changing. To deal with those changes we need proper policy, and policy takes time to develop. Health care is changing from transactional visits funded through Medicare to managing chronic illness. We know that many people in Australia suffer from chronic illness. Their needs take time to deal with, and many people now find it difficult to see a GP after many years of neglecting GP numbers and GP renumeration. This government is making the changes necessary to improve that.

I recently visited Wagga to open the new Wagga clinical school for the University of New South Wales. At this facility, medical students will be able to complete all of their training in Wagga, without having to go to the city. That's an initiative of the federal government. We'll train over a hundred local Wagga students to become doctors. They are therefore much more likely to stay in the local area, providing health care in Wagga and surrounds, than if they trained in the city.

We have similar institutions in Albury-Wodonga, on the North Coast, in Bathurst and in Orange, which are run by various universities, all funded by the federal government. We are about to announce an increased number of university placements for doctors to train in their local areas, which will make a huge difference around Australia. We still import around 40 per cent of our doctors into Australia from other countries. We need to train more of our own to stay in the areas where they train.

I firmly believe that people living in rural and regional areas deserve the same quality of health care that people living in our cities get, but that requires funding, and this government is determined to do that. The investment of $8.5 billion in delivering bulk-billing incentives will deliver more than 18 million GP bulk-billed visits every year nationwide. It is important to know that interactions in the health system run into the many tens of millions every year, so of course there's always going to be some problem if a tiny percentage aren't satisfied with their care. But, overall, this government is working hard to make sure Australians get the best in 21st-century healthcare, which they deserve. There are problems—of course there are. I'd be the first to admit that. There is the cost of specialist care. Access to specialists can be very difficult. There are now waits to see paediatricians, my own profession, in rural areas measured in years, not weeks or months, which means a lot of the effectiveness of that care is abrogated because of the long wait. We are working hard to change that.

We are looking at ways of getting more services to rural and regional areas. We're looking at getting more services to high-risk groups such as Indigenous populations, such as those with culturally and linguistically diverse populations, but it requires long-term thinking and long-term health planning, and that's what this government is doing through one of the best health ministers we've had in my time on this planet. Mark Butler is an excellent minister, and he is doing a remarkable job across a huge, broad portfolio.

Recently I visited the bulk-billing urgent care clinic at Campbelltown. I spoke with Dr Jovad Ahmed, a very experienced doctor who has worked there for a long period of time and worked in the area for a long time. For Dr Ahmed, our bulk-billing incentives have meant that he will be able to bulk-bill all his patients, they will be able to get GP care without long waiting times, and he will be able to ensure his patients can access the information, treatments and health care that they deserve and need to remain healthy.

I respect the member for Bowman for his political views, the opposite of mine, but I can assure him that GPs on the front line have welcomed our bulk-billing incentives. They will make a major difference to health care. They are part of the solution that this government is working hard on to make sure Australians continue to get the 21st-century care that they deserve. Medicare is a great institution. This side of politics has always supported it and will continue to do so.

Colin Boyce (Flynn, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the member for Bowman's motion, which notes:

(1) families across Australia are paying the price for the Government's broken promises on Medicare, with out of pocket general practitioner (GP) costs now almost $50 on average;

(2) the former Government left office with bulk billing rates at almost 90 per cent and lower GP out of pocket costs;

(3) the Prime Minister has broken his promise that Australians would only need their Medicare card, not their credit card, with costs continuing to rise and bulk billing continuing to plummet in 32 electoral divisions;

(4) only 13 per cent of metropolitan clinics have signed up to the Government's bulk billing program, with local GP practices struggling under the Government's rising cost of doing business crisis, including skyrocketing energy bills and rent; and

(5) the Government is using Medicare as a political football while ignoring the real pressures facing patients and GPs, leaving families in Australia saying it has never been harder or more expensive to see a doctor.

Department of Health, Disability and Ageing officials have admitted that out-of-pocket costs for patients are almost $50 on average, the highest on record, and will continue to go up. At the same time, GP bulk-billing rates in the Flynn electorate have fallen from 81.5 per cent under the coalition to 74.6 per cent under the Labor government. Local residents tell me it's harder and more expensive to see a doctor, which is feedback that is backed up by the government's own data. The Prime Minister keeps waving around his Medicare card in complete disregard for the struggles facing patients and family practices.

While out-of-pocket costs are a huge issue for Central Queensland and the Wide Bay regions, some regions in the Flynn electorate don't even have access to GPS or health professionals. One way that I believe this can be improved or addressed is by partnering with local universities such as Central Queensland University and James Cook University. It is fundamental that governments support training centres in rural and regional areas, as we all know that if more doctors and health professionals can train locally they are more likely to stay locally. An example of this is the Emerald Allied Health Facility, which was opened in August of this year. Delivered in partnership between James Cook University's Central Queensland Centre for Rural and Remote Health, Central Highlands Rural Health and the Australian government, the new facility will support both the community and the next generation of health professionals. I was proud to stand alongside the former regional health minister Dr David Gillespie and former member for Flynn Ken O'Dowd back in 2022 when this initiative was first announced under the coalition government. The new clinic and training centre will bring allied health services closer to home, reducing the need for families to travel long distances. It supports students and clinicians to train and practice rurally, creates opportunities for local carers in health and strengthens the workforce retention in the Central Highlands.

Another example of a model that clearly works is the Regional Medical Pathway. The pathway allows for up to 60 students per year to complete their entire medical studies in regional Queensland. It sees students complete a three-year Bachelor of Medical Science (Pathway to Medicine) course with CQUniversity before moving to UQ's four-year MD program, with both education programs delivered locally in Bundaberg or Rockhampton. As part of the partnership, the hospital and health services will provide students with internship opportunities and postgraduate training places within their regional footprints. The first intake of students entered the pathway in 2022, with aspiring doctors from across Australia relocating to Bundaberg and Rockhampton to commence CQUniversity's Bachelor of Medical Science (Pathway to Medicine) degree.

While issues regarding regional health are complex and won't be fixed overnight, it's important that this Labor government and the Prime Minister stop gaslighting Australians about bulk-billing and the availability of GPs. The simple fact is that almost every time an Australian goes to the doctor, the need for both their credit card and their Medicare card is evident. The coalition has launched a new website, www.howmuchdoyoupay.au, calling on Australians to share their real experience about the true cost of seeing a GP. We know it's never been harder or more expensive to see a doctor, and it's time the Labor government admitted this and do something to alleviate the chronic shortage of health professionals across Australia.

Jerome Laxale (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This motion is yet another example and attempt by those opposite to pretend that Medicare magically started declining the moment they left office, the moment Australians elected the Albanese Labor government to fix it. Australians deserve honesty. Bulk-billing is under pressure today because the coalition froze the Medicare rebate for six years and because the bulk-billing system was neglected for a decade by those opposite. Every GP in Bennelong knows it. Every patient who struggles to get an appointment knows it. Everyone who continues to pay a gap fee knows it.

What we on this side of the House won't do is let the opposite rewrite history to cover their own neglect. The biggest driver of rising GP costs wasn't the Albanese Labor government; it was the coalition locking Medicare rebate freezes for six straight years—zero indexation, zero increases, zero support for GPs. Australians, particularly those in Bennelong, aren't buying this weak attempt from the coalition to deflect from their responsibility, and neither is this parliament.

We were elected in 2022 and again in 2025 to strengthen Medicare. Medicare was created by Labor, protected by Labor and strengthen by Labor. We've invested $8½ billion to turn around the bulk-billing decline and expand universal access, that real, Australian value of affordable and accessible health care. We tripled the bulk-billing incentive in 2023, the largest investment in bulk-billing at the time, and it worked. There were 6½ extra bulk-billed visits across the country. Bulk-billing was up 3.2 percentage points nationally and 2½ per cent in New South Wales. That policy was directed at concession card holders and under-16s. On 1 November 2025, we extended that incentive to every Medicare card presentation at the GP. We've expanded incentives so that practices who exclusively bulk-bill get a bonus 12½ per cent payment when they do so. This rewards the clinics that are doing the right thing and makes it financially viable for the doctors to bulk-bill again. The accumulation of all these policies basically reverses the cuts to Medicare handed down by the Liberals and the former ministers for health, Dutton and Ley.

This policy is working. Already, 1,000 practices across the country have indicated they'll become 100 per cent bulk-billing clinics. This is on top of the 1,600 bulk-billing clinics that exist today. It's working. You reverse the trend by making bulk-billing pay doctors properly, not by freezing rebates for six years. A GP city practice that fully bulk-bills will now earn over $5,300 more than a mixed billing GP. In regional areas, the benefit is almost $24,000 more per year.

In Bennelong, we've seen this policy from 1 November deliver results. Before the reforms, less than 24 per cent of GP practices bulk-billed consistently. Now we've had four clinics shift from no bulk-billing or mixed bulk-billing to fully bulk-billed practices. This is just in one electorate. Eastwood Medical Centre, Kang Nam Surgery, Eastwood Specialist Centre and Myhealth Top Ryde have all moved from mixed or no bulk-billing to fully bulk-billed clinics. That means hundreds of families in Bennelong can now see their GP with just their Medicare card.

This builds on our network of urgent care clinics, which have bulk-billed since their inception. Well over 87 urgent care clinics have been delivered. They are not only providing fee-free care but also keeping people out of emergency departments. We expect more clinics across the country to make the very sound decision to bulk-bill all their patients. They know that when they do, they get to see more patients and deliver more care to the community. Compare our record of record investments in bulk-billing to the coalition's record of a six-year rebate freeze, zero indexation for GPS and zero structural reform. And they come into this place and they complain. Tell them they're dreaming.

Andrew Willcox (Dawson, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing and Sovereign Capability) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australians are being told that they've never had it better than they have under this government, but families know the truth every time they tap their card at the doctor's reception desk. Out-of-pocket GP costs are now pushing, on average, $50. That is a worrying statistic. That is a barrier to care. When the coalition left office, bulk-billing rates were nearly 90 per cent. Today, bulk-billing is collapsing in 32 electorates. The Prime Minister's famous promise, 'You'll only need your Medicare card, not your credit card,' is now nothing more than a punchline in doctors' waiting rooms. Throughout Australia, people are handing over their credit cards every time they visit a doctor, and many simply can't afford that anymore.

In my electorate of Dawson, what used to be a routine GP visit is now a financial decision. We have no fully bulk-billed GP clinics in Mackay, a city of around 130,000 people. None! The government says bulk-billing will reach nine out of 10 visits by 2030, but in Dawson this promise is a mile from reality. That is not strengthening Medicare; that is slow disintegration of it, and GP practices are sounding the alarm as loudly as their patients. They tell me the same story. They simply can't keep bulk-billing when costs just keep going up. To quote Family Health Care Mackay Rural View:

… the incentive does not cover the full cost of providing high-quality care. Therefore, our clinic will continue to charge an appropriate out-of-pocket fee for some consultations to ensure we can keep delivering high-quality care to our community.

Power bills have climbed. Commercial rent is climbing. Insurance costs are climbing. Everything is going up and the Medicare rebates aren't keeping up with 'Jimflation'. This is not economic management. This is a cost-of-living crisis delivered through the front door of every medical practice in regional Australia.

You cannot blame the doctors for walking away from bulk-billing when the numbers no longer stack up. Only 13 per cent of metropolitan GP clinics have signed up to Labor's bulk-billing program. If the program can't survive in Melbourne and Sydney, what hope do Mackay, Bowen and Burdekin have? Does this government really think 2030 is an acceptable target?

Tell that to the mother in Airlie Beach, ignoring the back pain that she can't afford to have checked because nappies and formula come first. And that $100 gap in up-front costs could mean the difference between early detection and ovarian cancer going unnoticed. Or tell that to the father in Home Hill, chalking up his chronic fatigue to overtime hours working to put food on the table for his family, unaware he could be weeks away from cardiac arrest. Tell that to the apprentice tradie in Paget, who cannot afford more than $100 to see a doctor. A simple blood test might have caught prostate cancer early, but by the time the symptoms are severe, it's diagnosed as stage 4. We know early detection saves lives. This government's failure to fix Medicare is not just short-sighted but also putting lives at risk. This is the reality for too many Australians today: a shrinking Medicare promise, regional communities forced to delay care, and families waiting until illness becomes an emergency. For some, that delay will result in death. That is the cost of this government's failure. The reality is that families are paying more, waiting longer and getting less.

Medicare is not strengthened by token slogans. It is strengthened by access, and there is no access when the GP workforce is shrinking, when clinics can't afford to bulk-bill and when families must budget for something that should be universal. This government needs to stop treating health care like a talking point and start treating it like the lifeline it is, especially for regional Australia. Right now, under Labor, a Medicare card is little more than a discount voucher.

Matt Smith (Leichhardt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I'm very happy to continue my remarks on this motion brought forward by the member for Bowman. Medicare is one of Australia's great success stories, and while we can throw numbers about, the simple thing is that facts don't care about your feelings. In Leichhardt there are 24 fully bulk-billed practices helping families and kids. Bulk-billing rates in Queensland alone have gone up by 3.4 per cent. That is up despite what those people opposite would have us believe. Facts and figures don't lie.

I'd like to talk about a little town not actually in my electorate. It's called Mission Beach and is about an hour and a half south in the electorate of Kennedy. But I'm sure the member for Kennedy won't mind—we have a passport-style arrangement going on there. Mission Beach is one of the most beautiful places in the country, outside of Leichhardt. It has palm-lined beaches, crystal-clear water and, in 2021, no GP clinic. When last I checked, in 2021, those opposite were in charge. One of the most beautiful places in the country could not hold a GP. That's incredible!

But I'm pleased to report that they now have one. The people of Mission Beach—an ageing and retiring population—now have access to a GP on a regular basis. That's because of the Anthony Albanese Labor government. That's because of Medicare. That's because of the investment that Labor always puts into people's health and people's wellbeing. It's who we are.

They talk about the credit card. They talk about the numbers. They talk about slogans. But $8.5 billion isn't a slogan; it's a commitment. It is the largest single investment in Medicare since its inception. It is something that we should be proud of as a nation. I have lived under the regime of the US medical system, knowing how much it can cost without that safety net. Now the safety net has grown.

One thing we can all agree on is that your postcode shouldn't matter in how you get healthcare. Your income shouldn't matter in how you get healthcare. I represent some of the most remote and disadvantaged places in the nation. Things like rheumatic heart disease, which is basically eliminated in the rest of the first world, runs riot through the cape. But, because Labor invests, we can give hope, we can give opportunity, and people know that when they show up to a doctor at one of the 24 bulk-billing clinics in Leichhardt, all that they need is their Medicare card. When we go to an urgent care clinic—as I had to do to get my daughter's X-rays—we know that all we need is a Medicare card.

When Minister Butler came we up, were talking to a woman who had been attacked by a dog. She'd only heard about the Medicare clinic a little bit. She rolled in and got stitched up. Her wounds were cleaned and she was home within 45 minutes—unheard of for that kind of treatment. If you go to any of the major hospitals, you can be in ED for hours and hours. But, with just her Medicare card and our investment in Medicare and the urgent care clinics, she got home, she was comfortable and she was relieved. She had no idea who Minister Butler was when she was relaying this story to him, but it was a nice thing to see how the investment works for people on a day-to-day basis. It is something I know this side is very proud of, something I know that we hang our hats on and something that I know makes a difference.

Ben Small (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It might seem old-fashioned when we talk about our health system to talk about triage. But, at the end of the day, I think that lights are unfortunately flashing red on the dashboard—because every symptom that we look at indicates we've got a very sick patient on our hands indeed. In fact, rather than the strengthening Medicare policy doing what it says on the tin, I worry that in regional communities like mine it will actually undermine health outcomes entirely by pushing regional general practices closer to the brink than they already are today.

I think that we've got to get our regional health system off life support. Unfortunately, the only way we can do that is by recognising that the system doesn't do better with volume over value. The domino effect that we've seen with hospital blockage and GP overload is the first point of failure. The government's failure to recognise that core funding is now having a devastating domino effect across the health system is manifesting itself through record ambulance ramping and acute bed block in our public hospitals in Western Australia. This crisis means that patients with complex needs or those requiring just minor procedures as day patients can't get timely care in a hospital setting. It's reasonable to ask, 'Where do these patients go?' They present to the last accessible link in the chain in regional Australia—that is, of course, their local GP clinic. But our GPS are increasingly being asked to manage advanced care that far exceeds the scope of a standard consultation. This is where the funding model creates an impossible paradox for our doctors on the front line.

The average length of a GP consult might be around 19 minutes, but the economics of the bulk-billing incentivisation rather promotes the shortest possible transaction. So our GPS can't simply flex their patient throughput to absorb the hospital overflow that we're seeing. Complex cases that do require longer consultations—level C or D consultations of 40 minutes or more—are being diverted, yet the government's new bulk-billing incentives don't adequately fund this time that the doctor invests in the care relationship. Instead, they reward volume, frequency and shorter consults. I suspect that we'll see the consequences of this policy being quite severe.

For a regional practice in the south-west, like those in Bunbury and Busselton, if they dare to stick with a mixed-billing model to survive as businesses, the consequence is of course that they forfeit the significant bulk-billing practice incentive that requires 100 per cent of consults through the business by 100 per cent of doctors for 100 per cent of patients to be billed accordingly. Unfortunately, by being unable to access those incentives, they face the immediate erosion of their patient base, as the patients most sensitive to cost are being forced to migrate to fully bulk-billing clinics to stabilise the practice's patient loyalty and long-term viability. These are small businesses that we're talking about here, and the compounding risk of vertical integration in the health system and block funding is a critical concern because local clinics are raising with me the issue that conditional funding is structurally dangerous in our health system.

Centralised control occurs the moment the large private entities—we're seeing it through private health insurers or private equity groups—consolidate GP practices in Australia, which forces GPs to rely on a single conditional funding stream, whereas in fact we've seen significant benefits to the taxpayer through a health system that focuses on improved preventive health consultations, and they of course take time and cost money. That cost is an investment in better health outcomes in the longer term.

So we're undermining the quality of health care, and we're generating churn within GP practices, and I think that that is going to manifest over time. We're allowing isolated and frankly unsafe outcomes. We're implementing a flawed MyMedicare registration process that registers patients to a single doctor instead of a practice, creating endless administrative churn and placing yet further burdens on the small-business operators who are at the heart of regional medicine in communities like mine. At the end of the day, this leaves overheads rising and practices unsustainable, putting regional health at risk.

Julie-Ann Campbell (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to be really clear on what the member for Forrest is arguing here—really clear on what the member for Forrest and members opposite, members of the Liberal Party and members of the National Party, are arguing for here. What they are arguing is that we should not fund GPs to have every patient that walks through their door be bulk-billed. The members opposite are arguing that, when people walk through a GP's front doors, they should not just need their Medicare card. The members opposite are arguing that, when people walk through those GP's front doors, they need to have a copayment. We don't have to imagine what the coalition's policy would be when it comes to health care. We don't need a crystal ball to find out what the coalition's policy would be when it comes to health care. We don't have to be Nostradamus, because not only do we know what they did when they were in government but we also know what their plans were to get into government when it comes to health care.

We know that those opposite wanted a copayment. They want people, when they walk through the doors to get health care in their local suburbs, to have to put down money, not just use that green card. We know that those opposite wanted and indeed cut billions of dollars from the healthcare budget. We know that they had the distinction of having the worst ranked health minister in over four decades, and we know that they extended a two-year Medicare freeze to six long years without an increase to Medicare.

It was only at the start of this month that I stood in this chamber and spoke about Medicare. I'd like to thank the member for Bowman for giving me another chance to speak about the Albanese Labor government's commitment to Medicare. I'm a little surprised, however, to be given this opportunity, because after all the coalition's record on Medicare is absolutely dismal, and it's indefensible. In fact when I talked about freezing funding to Medicare, it was the opposition leader who, when she was health minister, did not increase Medicare rebates by even one dollar.

The member for Bowman would have you believe that Medicare is being used as, in his words, 'a political football'. Well, I can assure you that the Albanese Labor government is not here to play games. Instead, we are a government that is utterly focused on easing cost-of-living pressures, and our initiatives to strengthen Medicare are doing just that. The headline news is that Labor is delivering the single largest investment in Medicare since it was created by a Labor government four decades ago. The coalition may think health care is political fodder, but we believe it is essential. We believe that a strong healthcare system is an absolute pillar and foundation of a strong society. That's why Labor built Medicare, and it is why Labor continues to fund and invest in Medicare to make it better, not just on one day but every single day.

The foundation of this investment is the $8.5 billion being directed to delivering an additional 18 million bulk-billed GP visits. The first of this month was a special date, because it was when Labor expanded bulk-billing incentives for all Australians. This built on the 2023 bulk-billing incentive that focused on children under 16 years of age and Commonwealth concession cardholders. We are already seeing the impacts of this. We're seeing them in our local communities, we're seeing them at our GPs and we're seeing them in our suburbs. And it's not only in Medicare bulk-billing GP practices. There's another type of place where all you need is your Medicare card, and that's your local urgent care clinic. We've got one in Oxley at the Canossa, we've got one at the bottom of the PA and there are 90 in operation across the country, with another 47 on the way.

This is not about politics; it's about health care. And it's about the importance of every Australian having access to it with just their Medicare card.

Debate adjourned.