Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you for the question. We all know Medicare was hard-fought. We had to build it twice because the coalition in government destroyed the first effort to establish it. We all remember John Howard called bulk-billing a rort, Peter Dutton tried to end bulk-billing with a GP tax and Peter Dutton's successor as the health minister, now Leader of the Opposition, chose not only not to repair the damage but actually to make it worse, extending the Medicare rebate freeze—the only health minister in Medicare's history never to lift that rebate, not even once. And the result was predictable: bulk-billing in freefall and pressure on families kept rising.

For us on this side, universal health care is not negotiable. Medicare is for all Australians, and Labor will always fight for it. (Time expired)