Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

I move general business notice of motion No. 73:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that the Prime Minister promised 71 times to Australians that 'all you need is your Medicare card, not a credit card' and that it would be 'free to see a GP';

(b) notes that, despite the Prime Minister's promise, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare:

(i) while the Prime Minister was busy waving around his Medicare card claiming it is all you need to see a doctor, Australians have forked out almost $2 billion to see a GP in the past year,

(ii) in May 2025 alone, during the election campaign, Australians paid a staggering $166 million in combined out-of-pocket costs, and

(iii) Australians need their credit cards more and more, as well as their Medicare card, to see a GP under Labor;

(c) condemns the Prime Minister for not being truthful with Australians during the Federal Election campaign; and

(d) calls on the Prime Minister to admit that he misled Australians about Medicare.

Today, I stand to speak on the general business motion that I have moved in this place. I moved this motion because of my extraordinary concern about the Prime Minister and the government misleading Australians about a crisis befalling our healthcare system at the moment, most particularly a crisis in access to general practice, which is access to primary care. I say this—and I'll provide evidence as to why I'm concerned—because during the election campaign the Prime Minister, the leader of our nation, promised Australians that all you need is your Medicare card, not your credit card, when you visit your doctor. He also said it would be free to see a GP. After he made that commitment to Australians—71 times at least that we can identify—Australians quite rightly expect that, when they see their GP, they will not have any out-of-pocket expenses. That means, when they go to see the GP, they will provide their Medicare card, and that will be the only card that they require.

However, we knew all along this was unlikely to be achieved. We remained very concerned throughout the campaign while the government, particularly the Prime Minister, in his shady stunts, was running around, wielding his plastic card as if somehow that was going to be his whole platform for winning the election. We constantly said throughout the campaign that we believed the Prime Minister was misleading Australians and giving them a false sense that their health care was about to become free. Australians know, as they have experienced it over the last three years in particular, about how much costs for accessing their GP have gone up. In fact, they have gone up on average by 45 per cent; the out-of-pocket costs of going to see a GP have risen.

Immediately following the election we found out, on the incoming government brief, that the Department of Health and Aged Care advised the Prime Minister and advised the government prior to the election that, in fact, there was no possibility every person would be able to see their GP for free. That FOI identified that, even on the conservative estimates of the Department of Health and Aged Care, the department believed that a quarter of GP clinics across Australia will not bulk-bill, despite the Australian Labor Party government's promises to Australians during the election campaign.

This data shows that millions of Australians will still need their credit card, something that the Prime Minister promised them they would not need. So, quite clearly, the Prime Minister's own Department of Health, Disability and Ageing has actually belled the cat on the fact that he not only misled Australians during the election campaign but did so knowingly. But, as I said, the worst part of it is that not only did he mislead Australians about how much money they were going to have to pull out of their own pockets when they go to see a GP; right now, that amount is higher than it has ever been before.

But the other telling thing was, this week, the Minister for Health and Ageing, Mark Butler, on morning television, said:

We never said there'd be a hundred per cent bulk billing.

What I'd really like to understand from the Prime Minister is how, if all you need to visit your doctor is your Medicare card, that cannot mean you're telling the Australian public that they will get their primary health care for free. How is saying, 'It will be free to see a GP,' not telling Australians that every Australian will get to see their GP for free? The Prime Minister knew it wasn't true. He knew it wasn't true when he was saying it. He knows it's not true now. He continues to say it, and yet his very own health minister is quite happy to admit that what the Prime Minister is saying was never actually true.

Quite clearly, what this tells us is that we have a prime minister who is prepared to use a disingenuous stunt that he knows to be not true in order to win an election. He is prepared to use something as important as Australians' affordable access to primary care as a stunt in order to win an election. I think this reflects incredibly badly on the Australian Prime Minister.

The reality is that, while the Prime Minister has been wandering around and waving his Medicare card, in May 2025 alone—that's the first month of the new government's reign; this is not in the previous term but after the Prime Minister had made his promise to Australians—Australians forked out $166 million in out-of-pocket costs when they saw their GPs. In the first month of this government's reign, after that promise, not only have we got the department of health saying it's not possible; we actually have the facts that say, at a time when we've got a cost-of-living crisis and Australians are struggling to meet the costs of everyday life, Australians had to fork out $166 million—hardworking taxpayers' money—despite the Prime Minister telling them that they weren't going to have to pay anything at all. And, in fact, last year it was $2 billion in out-of-pocket expenses. That is the Prime Minister's $2 billion lie. Quite clearly, the facts are the facts, and creating a false expectation amongst Australians at a time when they are under immense financial pressure is not only disingenuous; it's, quite frankly, cruel.

We knew already that this prime minister couldn't be trusted when it came to Medicare. But quite clearly he's prepared to say and do anything to cover the abject failings of our healthcare system as we stand here today. By absolutely every metric, the Albanese Labor government failed Australians on healthcare in the first three-year term of their government. I hope they don't do it in the next three years, but I fear they probably will, because they're much more interested in headlines than they are in actually delivering for Australians.

You say, 'Why do I say that they have failed on every metric?' Despite what the Labor Party will tell you—because quite clearly they're happy to tell you anything to cover up their failings—bulk-billing has fallen from over 88 per cent to 77 per cent in the three years that they've been in government. They'll say to you, 'But those figures were inflated, because, of course, they were figures as we were coming out of COVID.' Well, let's disregard the COVID figures. In 2019, bulk-billing rates were 86 per cent, and they're now 77 per cent. From pre-COVID till now—bulk-billing rates plummeted nine per cent in that time but 11 per cent in the first three years of this government's term.

The other thing is that, as I said, out-of-pocket costs have never, ever been higher. There has been a 45 per cent increase in out-of-pocket costs over those three years. So that means Australians are paying more out of their pocket than they have ever paid before when they go to visit a doctor. It doesn't matter how many times the Labor Party comes in here and tells you a story about how wonderful everything is. Australians know the difference, because they feel it every time they go to their doctor. They feel it in their hip pockets.

But more egregious than that—more egregious than the fact that they're having to fork out so much more when they go to see their doctor, despite the promises of those opposite—is that 1.5 million Australians last year chose not to see their doctor because they said they couldn't afford to do it. They made the very difficult decision of not seeing the doctor because they had other pressures on their family budget—pressures about putting food on the table, paying the mortgage, filling up the car with fuel, paying for their insurance and paying for the stuff that their kids needed when they went to school. Those were the decisions that Australians had to make. They forwent going to a doctor because they had to make those very difficult decisions about how they were going to spend their money. And, as a result of not seeing their doctor, Australians got sicker. We have seen increased pressure on our emergency departments and we have seen ramping accelerate in every state and territory around the country. Not only does that mean that Australians are getting sicker, so it's very bad for Australians; it also means that, by the time they go to see a doctor, the cost to our healthcare system and our hospitals is so much higher, when it could have been prevented if they'd simply had access to their GP.

So, as I said, we've seen an increase in ramping, an increase in emergency presentations, an increase in out-of-pocket costs, an increase in people not seeing the doctor and bulk-billing rates falling. I don't know how this government can congratulate itself on health. They should put down their smokescreen, they should put down their disingenuous stunts, and they should actually accept the fact that we have a challenge and a crisis in our primary-care system and in our healthcare system and that we should be addressing that. Don't pretend it doesn't exist, because that won't solve the problem.

The government's very good at making sure that all they do is denigrate the record of the coalition. Well, let me put it on the record tonight. The disgraceful scare campaigns that have been run by those opposite for the last three elections actually fly in the face of the facts. Funding to Medicare under the coalition government increased every single year, from $18.6 billion when Labor left government in 2012-13 to more than $30 billion in 2021-22 when we were in government. Significantly, bulk-billing was much, much higher when we were in government. It consistently rose the entire time that we were in government.

The other point that's worth making—despite those opposite once again telling the Australian public things that are not correct about the coalition's track record on the PBS—is that we are proud supporters of Australians getting access to affordable medicines. We want Australians to get access to cheaper medicines. In fact, we listed 2,900 new or amended medicines during our time in government. We made a commitment that, if the process through the TGA and PBAC approved a medication, we would list it on the PBS. The last time the Labor Party were in government, back in 2012, they stopped listing medicines on the PBS because, by their own admission, they had run out of money to do so. That is in stark contrast to the absolute commitment from the coalition government during its time to make sure that all medications approved by PBAC were listed on the PBS.

What we saw in the last term of this government, despite the fact this government claims that it's the best friend of our healthcare system, was that they were the ones who, for the very first time, put a cap on the number of medicines that could be listed for a PBAC meeting. In effect, this is another backhanded way of not listing medications that might otherwise have been listed—because, if you can't get it onto the PBAC agenda, it can't be approved by PBAC, so therefore you don't have to list it. So this government continuing to perpetuate its scare campaigns and misinformation and to try to rewrite history and change the facts does not hide the fact that, by every single measure, the Albanese Labor government has been the worst government for Australian's health in history.

In conclusion, there is one other element of our healthcare system that I'd like to draw attention to, and that is the absolute epidemic that we have at the moment in relation to mental health. What this government did in its last term of government, in the three years from 2022 to 2025, is it got rid of the Mental Health Commission and it did not renew the funding for national suicide prevention research. They managed to chase the head of Mental Health Australia out of his position. He ended up giving up being the chair because he said that it was a pointless exercise because the Prime Minister was not listening to Australians who had challenges with mental health and was complete disregarding the sector.

This government, the Albanese Labor government, has failed Australians on health care and failed Australians when it comes to their mental health. And, yet, to this day, as we're standing in this parliament, they are still prepared to come in here, ask questions in question time, do an address in reply and make speeches that continue to perpetuate the lies. It must stop. (Time expired)