QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Mr BUTLER (Hindmarsh—Minister for Disability and the National Disability Insurance Scheme, Minister for Health and Ageing and Deputy Leader of the House) (15:03): It is hard to find someone in this place who works harder than the member for Bendigo to ensure that her community gets the fullest benefit of our investments in a stronger Medicare. She campaigned for a Medicare urgent care clinic that has already seen 20,000 people in Bendigo, every single one of whom was fully bulk-billed.

The year before that an endometriosis and pelvic pain clinic was opened in Bendigo, which has expanded and improved care options for women in that region. The longstanding Bendigo headspace will soon be upgraded to a better headspace Plus service so it can expand the range and the number of young people it can support. People in Bendigo have already filled three million cheaper medicines scripts because of our policies, including an additional 750,000 scripts that were completely free of charge.

These investments are making a real difference, not just in Bendigo but across regional Australia, and the biggest difference is in bulk-billing. As the member said, bulk-billing was in freefall when we came to government because of a decade of cuts to Medicare, and that is why we tripled the bulk-billing incentive paid to GPs in 2023 for pensioners and concession card holders.

It's why, last November, we extended bulk-billing incentives for the first time ever to all Australians. Those incentives paid to GPs are much higher in regional Australia than in the major cities—50 per cent higher, for example, in a city like Bendigo. So I'm delighted to say that our bulk-billing investments, backed in so hard by the member for Bendigo, have utterly transformed bulk-billing in her community.

Before November, only two out of every 10 general practices in Bendigo were fully bulk-billing. That's now seven in 10—from two in 10 to seven in 10, in just a few months. The general bulk-billing rate in Bendigo is up more than 21 per cent since our first investments in 2023—from 68 per cent to 89 per cent.

For people who don't have the benefit of a concession card, the increase in bulk-billing in Bendigo has been more than 30 per cent, thanks to our investment. More bulk-billing and cheaper medicines, at a time of real cost-of-living pressure, are obviously good for the hip pocket and obviously good for household budgets. But they also mean that more people in Bendigo are going to the doctor and filling their scripts when they need to, rather than when they feel they can afford to.

And that is building a healthier Bendigo and a healthier Australia.