Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I feel like I'm going around in a washing machine here. There seems to be such a common theme of what the Albanese Labor government are doing to try and overcome the decade—the disastrous decade—of the coalition government.

I love Medicare. My family loves Medicare, from the day-to-day prescriptions, the knocks and bumps, the aches and pains and the advice at the local pharmacy—a big shout-out to John and Nam, who run my local pharmacy and are invaluable to my family—to the more serious cuts and breaks, which our urgent care clinics are now providing an excellent service for. I've had cause to take members of my family to the urgent care clinic for both of those things, and it has been an excellent service that is fully bulk-billed. Then there are the unfortunate circumstances where people need hospital and emergency care, and again I'll tell you my family has had to use those. Nobody wants that, but it is such a relief to know that it's there, that there's someone there for you and that your Medicare card will carry through any of your health needs.

But that's not what we've seen from those opposite at all. Now, they can argue numbers. We can argue about which set of numbers we're looking at and what year they are from and compare which bit to which bit, but—bottom line—let's not forget what they did when they were in government. Let's just own exactly what you did to Medicare and to the health system in this country while you were in government. There was the introduction of, or the attempt to introduce, a GP tax. You froze indexation on Medicare rebates. I've spoken to clinics and hospitals whose doctors have gone on and on about how that just about crippled them over those, I think, seven long years. They have spoken about how crippling that freezing of indexation was to their ability to keep up. That's before we even go to the $50 million cut from public hospitals and the fact that you tried to get people to pay a fee to go to an emergency department. So I'm sorry, but it is the same old story here: almost a decade of you not actually having a care in the world for the average person out there who's trying to just get by, deal with their health conditions and make sure that they can get the care that they need when they need it.

So I think the way you are approaching the situation right now is quite cheeky, whereas we over here on the government benches, having been re-elected in May this year for good reason, have delivered cheaper medicines, saving well over $1 billion in out-of-pocket costs for people. We've frozen the maximum PBS co-payment for every Australian—the largest cut to the price of PBS medicines—and that co-payment is going to change. It's going to go up further. Sorry, it's going to go down further; our rebate is going to go up further. We've taken the co-payment from $42.50 down to $30, and then on 1 January it'll go down to $25. These are things that impact people every single day. These are cost-of-living measures that help people every single day. That's before we even get to the additional 18 million bulk-billed GP visits each year. That's what the policy is. That is what it says. This is what we are doing. This is going to make an enormous difference.

Beyond that, we've had a huge doctor crisis, a huge problem with getting access to doctors, and why is that? Again, significantly, you can look at the almost 10 years of having insufficient training for doctors and an insufficient pipeline of medical professionals coming through, and that can only be sheeted back to those opposite. What we've done is to put thousands more doctors into training programs. This year, we saw the largest ever GP training program, and that's something that we are really proud of, because we're not just here for the sugar hit. We're not just here for today. This is about building the pipeline for the future to address the crisis that was, embarrassingly, left by those opposite. We will support people, and it will be your Medicare card that you will take with you and that you can rely on for the services, supports and health care that you need. (Time expired)