Jana Stewart (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today I rise in support of the National Health Amendment (Cheaper Medicines) Bill 2025. Labor has always been the party of health care, from Chifley's 1946 amendment enshrining health care in our Constitution to Whitlam's universal healthcare reforms and Hawke's Medicare. Now, under the Albanese Labor government, we continue that tradition with our cheaper medicines bill. We believe that every Australian should be able to afford the medicine they need without worrying about the cost. From 1 January 2026 no Australian will pay more than $25—or $7.70 with a concession card—for a general PBS script. That is a cut of more than 20 per cent, saving Australians over $200 million every single year.

We're already seeing the impact. As of 31 July this year, Victorians alone have saved more than $425 million across 69 million cheaper scripts. What does this mean on the ground? It means more money back in the pockets of everyday Australians. In the shires of Yarriambiack, Horsham and Ararat, where older people live with higher rates of chronic conditions, these savings absolutely matter. In Nicholls, where more people live with at least one chronic condition than the state or national average, these savings matter. For First Nations communities, where chronic disease rates are higher and access to care is harder, these savings matter.

This bill cuts the cost of medicines for people in rural Victoria and right across the nation. The Albanese Labor government isn't just reducing the costs of medicines; we're making the biggest investment in health care in a generation. We're making sure you can see a GP for free with the single largest investment in Medicare since it began over 40 years ago.

We are building 50 more Medicare urgent care clinics, on top of the 87 we opened last term. That means four in five Australians will live within a 20-minute drive of one of those clinics. And we know they work. Since June 2023, these clinics have already treated over 1.8 million people.

Twenty years later, Labor's taking the cost out again. This is what Labor governments do: we invest in universal health care, we make medicines cheaper, and we build Australia's future, because Labor has always been and will always be the party of health care.