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) (14:07): Thank you to the member for Corangamite. She has been such a terrific supporter of our strengthening Medicare agenda, and that agenda is delivering real change for people in the beautiful Surf Coast.
Just in the months since it opened, the Torquay Medicare Urgent Care Clinic has already seen thousands and thousands of people. That's seven-days-a-week, high-quality urgent care, fully bulk-billed, in Torquay. But I'm pleased to report that our record investments in bulk-billing are also making a real difference in that part of Victoria.
Before those investments, bulk-billing had fallen to just 65 per cent of GP visits in Corangamite. But, as a result of the changes that the member supported so strongly, those rates are up 15 per cent. Bulk-billing is now up over 80 per cent in Corangamite, and it's still climbing.
And it's not just the Surf Coast; bulk-billing is climbing in every single state and territory across our great nation, delivering millions and millions of additional free visits to the doctor every single year. But I also want to thank the member for her hard work chairing the NDIS joint standing committee, because that committee's recent report was a really important guide to the amendments tightening control on fraud and integrity that we were able to negotiate with the opposition and pass this week through the parliament.
As well as the chair, I want to thank the members for Whitlam, Richmond, Bowman and, in her absence, Fowler, because that committee's work has helped us put together the best possible set of laws to get the NDIS back on track. Now, these are hard reforms, but they are absolutely essential, because this wonderful scheme had got way off track. It had become too big.
It was costing too much and growing way too fast and had become too soft to target for the fraud, the crooks and the shonks that were highlighted so clearly by that committee's report. But I want to say to all Australians watching that even with these changes—and they are big changes—this scheme will continue to grow, it will continue to be the biggest social program the country has outside the age pension and it will remain the centrepiece of the most comprehensive suite of supports for people with a disability that you will find anywhere in the world.
The hard work the parliament did this week secures that support for decades to come, and I want to thank the member for Corangamite for her contribution to that.