Health Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures No. 1) Bill 2025
Mr MATT SMITH (Leichhardt) (17:03): I rise to speak on the Health Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures No. 1) Bill 2025. Once again we are here discussing how good Labor is for the Australian health system. This bill will help deliver a list of technical changes that will overall ensure better administration and delivery of key government systems and programs.
This will include supporting the automation of Medicare provider numbers; modernising the assignment of Medicare benefits, bulk-billing and simplified billing; and ensuring the consequences of breaching a condition and/or withdrawal from the Bonded Medical Program are fairly balanced. All of these changes will build towards a better administrated and more efficient public health system.
It's a win for the Australian public and a win for medical professionals. It is a good change, with our government committed to delivering better health care to Australians. The Albanese Labor government is strengthening Medicare right across the board, with more doctors, more urgent care clinics and cheaper medicines.
We are making the largest investment in Medicare since its creation over 40 years ago. And I'll just remind everyone—just in case you haven't heard—Labor built Medicare, and we will always protect it. I'd like to take out my Medicare card and wave it, but I don't feel like testing that boundary today!
Our government is investing $8.5 billion to deliver an additional 18 million bulk-billed GP visits each year, hundreds of nursing scholarships and thousands more doctors in the largest GP training program ever. Australian patients and families will save hundreds of dollars in out-of-pocket costs, with patient savings of up to $859 million a year by 2030. We are expanding bulk-billing incentives to all Australians for the first time and boosting Medicare payments to general practices that bulk-bill every patient.
This means nine out of 10 GP visits will be bulk-billed by 2030. We expect it to boost the number of fully bulk-billed practices to around 4,800 nationally—triple the current number of practices. That's why the Anthony Albanese government is tripling the bulk-billing incentive from 1 November—to get more people involved.
Nine out of 10 is 90 per cent. It is a worthy aspiration and something we are going to deliver. We also know that primary health care is important, and that's why we funded more bulk-billing and are delivering local Medicare urgent care clinics.
The Medicare urgent care clinic model is simple: provide bulk-billing care for urgent, non-threatening conditions—kid rolls an ankle, falls off a skateboard or gets bitten by a dog, or you cut yourself shaving. They're open seven days a week with extended hours, with no appointment needed. The Albanese government has now opened over 90 Medicare urgent care clinics across the country, with more than 1.8 million Australians receiving treatment.
Medicare urgent care clinics are taking the pressure off hospitals. It means hospitals can spend more time on the life-threatening emergencies they were built for, and it means patients can get in, get out and get back home, where they want to be. During the election, we committed to deliver 15 new Medicare urgent care clinics right across the country.
Once all of Labor's Medicare urgent care clinics are open, four in five Australians will live within a 20-minute drive of an urgent care clinic. And all you will need is your Medicare card, never your credit card. In Queensland, there have been more than 367,000 presentations.
One of the busiest is the Cairns South Medicare urgent care clinic, located in the suburb of Edmonton. That's why, during the election, we committed to increase the resources of the Cairns South Medicare urgent care clinic and deliver a Medicare urgent care clinic for the northern parts of Cairns. The north of Cairns gets cut off during the wet season.
During Cyclone Jasper, the Northern Beaches would have been unable to get any form of medical attention. This urgent care clinic will resolve that problem. I'm happy to announce the tender is now open, and very soon we'll be able to deliver that for the people of Cairns.
We've also delivered cheaper medicines. Labor has passed laws to cut the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme co-payment from $31.60 to $25 from 1 January next year, delivering on another of our election commitments. The last time PBS medicines cost no more than $25 was in 2004.
That's more than 20 years ago. This is being delivered to ease another key cost-of-living pressure. Having already slashed the cost of medicine by the largest amount in the history of the PBS, we will now go even further, with a more than 20 per cent cut to the maximum cost of PBS medicines, which will save Australians over $200 million a year.
Making medicines cheaper is a tangible way we are improving people's lives. You should never have to choose between medicine and a meal. Four out of five of these medicines will become cheaper because of this investment.
Pensioners and concession card holders will continue to benefit from the freeze on the cost of their PBS medicines, with the cost frozen at its current level of $7.70 until 2030. This is just the latest step in our ambition to deliver cheaper medicines for Australians. The Albanese Labor government has already delivered more free and cheaper medicines sooner, with a 25 per cent reduction in the number of scripts a concessional patient must fill before they hit the PBS safety net.
That's the largest cut to the cost of medicines in the history of the PBS, with the maximum cost falling from $42 to $30. There are 60-day prescriptions, saving time and money for millions of Australians. Those are very important in an electorate like mine.
If you live on the stations or in one of the communities and the nearest pharmacy is a three-hour drive away, you want to go in every two months rather than every fortnight. Cheaper medicines are good for the hip pocket and good for your health. If you don't believe me, I can tell you that, in Queensland, more than $330 million has been saved on 55 million cheaper scripts.
Is it any surprise the Australian public have always supported and loved Medicare? Yet we're delivering more. The Anthony Albanese Labor government is delivering more, lower cost and better health care for women and girls.
We know that women too often experience delayed diagnosis for conditions, from endometriosis to heart disease. Their pain is dismissed. They struggle with issues such as unplanned pregnancies, menopause and miscarriage.
The medical fraternity—and it quite often is a fraternity—has often gaslit women, not taking their medical conditions seriously. The Anthony Albanese government seeks to change that. It has listened and announced half a billion dollars in new investments for women for right across their entire lifespan.
Hundreds of thousands of Australian women are now accessing cheaper medicines and better health care due to our government's commitments. This includes the first PBS listing of new oral contraceptive pills in more than 30 years with the listing of Yaz, Yasmin and Slinda, saving 150,000 women hundreds of dollars a year. There is more choice, lower cost and better access to long-term contraceptives, with larger Medicare payments and more bulk-billing for IUDs and birth control implants, saving around 300,000 women a year up to $400 out of pocket.
There is more Medicare support for women experiencing menopause, with the new Medicare rebate for menopause health assessments, funding to train health professionals, the first-ever clinical guidelines and a national awareness campaign. There is the first PBS listing for new menopausal hormone therapies in over 20 years, with around 150,000 women saving hundreds of dollars a year from the listings of Prometrium, Estrogel and Estrogel Pro.
There are more endo and pelvic pain clinics treating more conditions. We're opening 11 new clinics and ensuring all 33 clinics are staffed to provide specialist support for menopause. There are new endo treatment options as well, including the PBS listing of Ryeqo.
There are contraceptives and treatment for uncomplicated UTIs from pharmacies, with two national trials to benefit 250,000 concession card holders, who will be able to consult a trained pharmacist at no cost. If medications are required, they pay only the usual medicine cost. Australian women undergoing IVF will receive earlier and more affordable access to fertility treatment, with Pergoveris pens added onto the PBS and the maximum number of pens increased to four instead of two per script.
This is a massive and much-needed investment to ensure Australian women can access the health care they need. Those are the facts—a list of what's going on. But it doesn't talk about the investment in Medicare and what that means to the people of Leichhardt, what that means to my own family and what that means to millions of families around Australia.
My children were born in the public hospital, both of them. A midwife came and checked on us. It was all free of charge.
My friend Dr Steve Sutcliffe is a cardiologist. He refuses to work in private practice; he'll only work in public. He travels the cape.
He diagnoses and treats RHD, a disease that has no place in modern Australia yet is prevalent throughout our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Far North Queensland. None of those people have access to private medicine. They are wholly reliant on Medicare and on people like my friend Dr Steve.
From my own personal experience, having lived in a place where there is no public health care, I can say that a shoulder reconstruction costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. The plastic surgery to reattach my lip was $70,000 or $80,000. In Australia, I had a stroke.
I spent three days in hospital. I came home with just my Medicare card. These are tangible differences.
This is what makes Australia great—the socialisation, the Medicare system that gives us bulk-billing and gives us the confidence to go to a hospital, not worry about that insurance payment and get the medicine that we need to get back home and live our lives. It is one of the great and enduring parts of Australian culture. It was built by Labor.
It is protected by Labor. It is expanded by Labor. These changes might seem technical and small in nature, but they streamline a system that makes a difference every single day to every single Australian.
We know that there's more work to be done, and I know that, as a government, we will always put the health of Australians first, because it is the most important thing that you have. Without your health, you have nothing else. And the Anthony Albanese Labor government will ensure that Australia has its health.