Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) | Hansard source

I want to place a couple of things on the record. First of all, I want to very clearly state the Australian Greens' support for the underlying legislation. This is a good reform. We would have liked to see the government pass this legislation earlier in the year. There were many opportunities for this bill to be resolved and passed earlier in the parliamentary agenda. There was a guillotine in March that they could have added it to. There was a guillotine at the beginning of the week they could have added it to. I know waiting to see the resolution of this legislation has caused a bit of stress and strain for the profession. As I said, we support this reform, so we will not be insisting on the amendment that passed the Senate but has been rejected by Labor in the House in order to see this legislation pass and for the profession to have certainty.

I will also say this. I read the government's reasoning for rejecting this amendment last night. It's a very simple amendment, an amendment which would have ensured, had the government supported it, that Australians that seek the healthcare support of endorsed podiatrists were able to receive and fill scripts from their podiatrists that were claimable and usable under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. It's a very sensible amendment. It closes one of the ridiculous gaps and loopholes in our healthcare system.

As others have contributed and stated very clearly in this debate, right now, Australians—a lot of older Australians, a lot of disabled people—who seek the expertise of an endorsed podiatrist or podiatric surgeon, those professionals who are enabled by state and territory law to prescribe, are in the position where they then face additional costs because they cannot utilise the PBS to fill in that script. They have to go back to the GP, where they then face the very real prospect of having to pay a gap fee before then getting a script that would then allow them to get the medication that they need more affordably. That doesn't make sense. It creates additional cost for the person seeking health care. It creates unnecessary, larger wait times for healthcare services.

The reasoning given by the government to reject this amendment in the House was, quite frankly—and I say this with a genuine acknowledgement of the diligence with which the minister and his team have worked across many areas of the healthcare system and the reform agenda, which we've been supportive of and are supportive of—ridiculous. The reasoning was ridiculous, folks. You rejected this amendment based on the idea that it's too hasty and doesn't take account of the required consultation needed to enact such a reform.

You've had the scope-of-practice review for two years, and this issue has been raised with this government for so long that, if my memory serves right, it was being raised with you when you were last in government in the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years. This has not come out of nowhere, and this is not extending the ability to prescribe to a profession that can't already prescribe, because it already can.

The patients of those healthcare professionals can't access affordable medicines. We've heard really clearly basic examples: somebody goes to a podiatrist with an issue. They are prescribed a regular 12-week course of treatment cream for the condition that might have led them to the podiatrist in the first place, and, because of this gap in the law, they pay upwards of $27 to $28 more than they need to—and that's without factoring in the additional costs of going back to the GP, the travel time, the complexity. That's ridiculous. We could have closed this loophole and made this form of health care more affordable to Australians right now. Right now we could have done that in this vote, but the government has said no.

Well, let me say this: we are not going to let this one go. This is a common-sense reform whose time has well and truly come. We're going to keep pushing this, and my message to the minister and their team is really crystal clear: this is going to keep coming back up, so let's get this done. Let's just come together around something that makes total sense and give people access to more affordable podiatric surgery and more affordable treatment from their endorsed podiatrist. It just makes sense.