Anne Urquhart (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health and Ageing. How is the Albanese Labor government continuing the work of strengthening Medicare after a decade of cuts and neglect?

Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last night, the Treasurer delivered his and the government's fifth budget. In every single one of those budgets, a priority of this government has been strengthening Medicare.

I struggle to think of a community that has benefited more from our Medicare investments than north-west Tasmania, and I struggle to think of a candidate who has campaigned more energetically for those investments than the member for Braddon. It may be part of the reason why she got the biggest swing to her at the last election of any one of the 150 members in this House—other than, of course, her endless charm and energy as a candidate!

Last night we provisioned $25 billion in additional hospital funding. That's $25 billion more than the states and territories would have got if the agreement negotiated under the Morrison government had been continued. I'm really pleased to say that the biggest beneficiaries of that additional investment are the smaller states, because they had been getting a raw deal for far too long.

Tasmania will get an additional almost $1 billion, really lifting them up to the level they should have been at for years and years. I know that's going to make a difference not just to Braddon but to all of the communities in Tasmania. We also locked in that investment for Medicare urgent care clinics, making them a permanent feature of our Medicare system. The Devonport urgent care clinic has already seen more than 40,000 people, all bulk-billed. The Burnie urgent care clinic, which was recently opened in the soon-to-be-opened Burnie Health Hub, has already seen thousands of patients from that part of Devonport as well.

Can I also say that Braddon has had one of the best responses to our bulk-billing investments of any community—one of the best to the first investment we made for 2023, targeted at pensioners and concession card holders. Since our additional record investment in November, the number of bulk-billing practices in Braddon has more than doubled. Now, seven out of 10 general practices in Braddon bulk-bill all of their patients all of the time. That's not to mention the cheaper medicines benefits—2½ million cheaper scripts just in the member for Braddon's community and hundreds of millions across the broader nation—or the mental health investments to open a new Medicare mental health centre in Devonport late last year, with another one to come in Burnie in the future, as well as uplifting the headspace at Burnie, which will now be full service as well.

We know the difference that these investments in strengthening Medicare make, not just in the member for Braddon's electorate but in electorates right across the country—those represented by those opposite, the crossbench and Labor as well—because Medicare is the core social program for our country. (Time expired)