Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Hansard source

Medicare billing data shows that our record investment in Medicare saw an additional six million bulk-billed GP visits in the year to December 2024. That is an important achievement, especially because of what we inherited from those opposite. The previous government liked to inflate their bulk-billing figures by relying on the massive number of COVID-related bulk-billing appointments during the pandemic, like PCR swabs and vaccines. The coalition fudged the figures, magically producing a bulk-billing figure of 88 per cent just on the eve of the last election. The vice-president, no less, of the college of GPs called them out and said that 88 per cent figure was 'misleading' and 'significantly skewed'. And other experts described that as 'a great big lie', 'essentially rubbish' and 'completely meaningless'. We are taking a very different approach. (Time expired)