National Health Amendment (Cheaper Medicines) Bill 2025

Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (12:28): Minister, I'm confused. I thought I was pretty good at maths. The explanatory memorandum says: Patients who are part of the Closing the Gap program won't have to pay more to reach the general patient PBS Safety Net threshold.

The safety net is expressed as a dollar value, and prescription is also expressed as a dollar value. How could a person spend more to reach the safety net when that is a defined value? Yes, they would need more prescriptions to qualify, but they wouldn't, as your explanatory memorandum says, spend any more money.

How is that the case? It's basic maths.