CARINA GARLAND, MEMBER FOR CHISHOLM: Well good morning everybody. Welcome to Burwood. And it’s really terrific to be able to welcome the Prime Minister and the Health Minister here in Chisholm. Yesterday’s announcement regarding Medicare and that Australians would be able to go visit the GP for free is really important to me. I grew up in a family where my parents ran a medical practice. My dad was a GP and my mum was a nurse so Medicare and the importance of providing healthcare for everyone in our society is something I learned at a very early age and I’m so proud now, all these years later, to be standing alongside the Prime Minister and the Health Minister talking about our historic investment into strengthening Medicare. Prime Minister -
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Well, thanks very much, Carina, and it's been fantastic to be here once again back in your electorate of Chisholm here in Burwood today. And I want to give a shout out to all the medical professionals who have met with us today. Those people, whether they be doctors or nurses, people working in reception here, making a difference. And it was terrific to meet young Eve, 96 years young, who's been coming to this surgery for many years, getting the care that she needs. That's what GP services are all about, that one on one interaction, that building of a relationship between a patient and a doctor that is so important for healthcare. We regard – in the Labor Party – Medicare as being the heart and indeed the soul of our health system. We believe that people should be able to see a doctor for free. And that stands in stark contrast to our opponents, Peter Dutton, who has said there were too many free Medicare services, which is why we are changing and reversing the cuts that Peter Dutton put in place. The tripling of the bulk billing incentive and applying it to everyone across the board will mean more Australians getting to see a doctor for free. It will lift bulk billing rates to 90% by 2030, providing an incentive as well for more medical professionals to become GPs. An incentive as well, with scholarships for nurses and midwives, is a part of our focus on the health system. It is, of course, one of the great divides in Australian politics. The difference is that Australians can't afford the Medicare bill that Peter Dutton will make them pay. I know that yesterday he had a bit of a change of heart, but no one believes a bloke who's been in office for such a long period of time. And before the time that he became the Health Minister, Tony Abbott promised no cuts to health. It was followed by $50 billion of cuts to hospitals, was followed by an attempt to put in a GP tax every time people visited a doctor, which means abolishing bulk billing altogether, a tax every time people had to go to an emergency department and a tax on pharmaceuticals. Only Labor believes in Medicare and making sure that this improvement that we are making – the biggest investment in Medicare for 40 years – is making a difference so that more Australians can see a doctor for free. I'll hand to the Health Minister and then we'll hear from some of the practitioners here.
MARK BUTLER, MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE: Well, thanks so much, Prime Minister and Carina, and to all the doctors, nurses, health professionals here in Burwood for hosting us today. The Prime Minister's right. Yesterday's announcement was the biggest investment in bulk billing in the 40 year history of Medicare. The previous biggest investment in bulk billing was the one we made the year before last, because we knew that when we came to government, bulk billing in Australia was in free fall. That's the language of the College of GPs to describe the situation we inherited. And it was no accident. It was a result of a six year funding freeze that Peter Dutton put in place when he was Health Minister back in 2014. A big part of the reason why doctors voted him the worst Health Minister in the history of Medicare. Now, our tripling of the bulk billing incentive in 2023 had exactly the effect that we wanted. It turned bulk billing around for 11 million pensioners, concession card holders and kids under the age of 16. And their bulk billing rate now is comfortably above 90%. But the announcement yesterday was squarely aimed at middle Australia. Those Australians who don't have access to a concession card and are seeing their bulk billing rates slide, they're seeing their out of pocket costs climb. And more and more of them are saying they can't afford to go to the GP when they need to. This is not just good for their hip pocket, this is also good for their health. Because if they choose not to go to a GP because they can't afford it, there's a very good chance they'll end up sicker and in a more expensive place within the health care system, like a hospital emergency department. As well, yesterday we announced more doctors and more nurses into the system because we know that we need to have more doctors go through our medical schools and more of them choose general practice as their preferred career. Already this year, we're training more junior doctors in general practice than at any time in the country's history. But we want to see even more. That's why we've increased the places by 200 next year, by another 200 a couple of years later, delivering 2,000 new GPs every single year. More doctors, more bulk billing and more Urgent Care Clinics is right at the heart of the agenda this Prime Minister has had since the day we got elected – to strengthen Medicare and turn the system around after a decade of cuts and neglect. Now, yesterday we saw the most extraordinary performance from a man with such a legacy of destroying Medicare pretend that suddenly he loves Medicare. He wanted to protect it and he'd match the announcement that we made. Well, we've seen this film before. They said exactly the same thing before 2013. They said they'd back in our health policies then, they said there'd be no cuts to health, and what we saw a few months later in a horror Budget in 2014, as the Prime Minister said, was a Health Minister in Peter Dutton trying to abolish bulk billing, cut $50 billion from hospitals and make every single Australian somehow pay as they walked in the front door of a hospital emergency department. We have seen this film. This is a man who simply cannot be trusted on Medicare. And why on earth would any Australian trust the man who created this mess in the first place to fix it up? Only Labor can be trusted to strengthen Medicare for our future. Now, Dr. Palmyra is going to say a couple of things I think first.
DR PALMYRA DE BANKS: Thank you. It's a fabulous investment in primary care and as a GP, it's wonderful to see this giving us the opportunity to be able to bulk bill more people in more places. This will have such an impact on our workforce as GPs, bring new people into the workforce, support junior doctors joining general practice as a profession and a speciality. So, really appreciate everything that's been invested and coming after last week's women's health announcements as well, it's fabulous. Thank you.
DR MUHAMMAD HASAN: Thanks everyone. We welcome this bulk billing incentives and this will give – we are the only bulk billing clinic in this neighbourhood. I hope this announcement will help more clinic to encourage in bulk billing and that will help more affordable and sustainable healthcare system in Australia. And this incentive will help us doctors and others and the patient also get more Medicare funded affordable health care system. And it will – this investment in a GP clinic will reduce the hospital burden as well. And also we welcome the incentive for doctors – GP training – that is very important and also increase the funding for junior doctors’ salary and the doctors’ paid leave and training. We welcome all this. Thank you.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks very much doctor, and thank you to what all of you do here looking after the local community. Happy to take questions.
JOURNALIST: PM, how can you say it's one of the great divides in Australian politics if the Coalition's matched your announcement, therefore making this bipartisan.
PRIME MINISTER: What we did was work through our Cabinet, through our ERC, put funding into the Mid Year Economic Forecast in advance, go through line by line, consult people about what this was, to make sure that it stacked up – how do we have a comprehensive change. What we saw from the Opposition yesterday was just pure politics. It's what they did prior to 2013. The 2014 Budget papers are very clear about $50 billion of cuts to hospitals, are very clear as well about what they wanted to do in a GP tax – a co-payment every time people visited a GP – meaning the abolition effectively of bulk billing. In addition to that, a payment would have to be made every time people visited an emergency department. And in addition to that, there was increased pharmaceutical payments as well. All of that wasn't done while Peter Dutton was somewhere else. Peter Dutton was front and centre and was the Health Minister and was so bad that doctors voted him the worst Health Minister in their history, the AMA. And indeed Tony Abbott, sacked him as Health Minister, moved him on and appointed Sussan Ley.
JOURNALIST: The fact that he outbid the announcement by $500 million – do you think that shows irresponsibility in terms of financial management?
PRIME MINISTER: Yet again, the thing with Peter Dutton is that you get thought bubbles. You get thought bubbles like this, you get thought bubbles like a different tax rate. I encourage you to ask Mr Dutton, when he's here, why people in regional Australia, when he made the announcement in Mount Isa about zonal taxation rates, whether that still is his policy, or whether a second referendum on Indigenous recognition is still his policy, or whether – last Friday he said that new citizens who have been waiting and in the queue for a long period of time, some for as long as five years to actually have their citizenship ceremonies – that that was somehow all about Gaza, when none of the people getting there citizenship are from Gaza. These are all just thoughts, spontaneously thrown out there, and I think during an election campaign, when its held, this is what he will be held to account on. Not just being able to come up with these thought bubbles. His record stands clear – it’s there for all to see. He is on the record as saying there are too many free medical services under bulk billing and Medicare. He did it repeatedly when it was a considered position when he was the Health Minister and he needs to be held to account on that.
JOURNALIST: The AMA says under your new Medicare plan, we won't reach 90 per cent bulk billing rates. What do you make of that?
PRIME MINISTER: We're very confident that we will reach it and when we've spoken with doctors – and I'll ask Mark to comment as well – this has been welcomed across the board because it will make such a substantial difference. And we know that the decision that we made before yesterday, the largest investment in Medicare, had the impact we thought it would. The impact on concession card holders, families with children, those people who made up the 11 million Australians who benefited from our tripling of the bulk billing incentive - for those Australians, are receiving bulk billing up to 90%. That's been achieved. And that's an indication that we've got this policy right. And that's why we then took that experience and translated it into ensuring that every Australian can have that access. Mark -
HEALTH MINISTER: Thanks, Prime Minister. Probably the only thing I disagree with the Prime Minister on is actually the tripling of the bulk billing incentive even outperformed our expectations. It's been literally that good. We've seen a big rebound in bulk billing of pensioners, concession card holders, and we're very confident we'll see that for middle Australia as well. We’ve modelled this really, really carefully and we're confident that almost 5,000 practices will be better off if they shift to being fully bulk billing. So, not 90%, but closer to 100% bulk billing. And this comes on top of the other record investments we've made. As the Prime Minister said, the tripling of the bulk billing incentive for pensioners. But also we have delivered the three biggest annual increases to the Medicare rebate in our three years in government, in three decades – since Paul Keating was the Prime Minister. Leaving aside bulk billing incentives, we've increased Medicare income for doctors by more in three years than the former government did in nine, because, of course, Peter Dutton froze Medicare funding. So, we're very confident about the modelling we've put in place. If anything, it's quite conservative. It suggests that we’d take some years to get to 90 per cent. The important thing is this funding takes effect this year. It takes effect very quickly. It's not scaled up over time it's put in place very quickly for practices to make the business decision to return to what most doctors want to do, and that is to let patients come in without them having to think about their credit card.
JOURNALIST: Barnaby Joyce has challenged the Government to come back to Canberra to hear how you propose on paying for this Medicare boost. Would you do that?
PRIME MINISTER: Barnaby Joyce wants people to go to Canberra? I'm pleased he's still there. Barnaby Joyce is someone who his own team are banning, putting a gag on during the election campaign, introducing special rules.
JOURNALIST: You might go back there though?
PRIME MINISTER: Look, I go back there all the time. I live there.
JOURNALIST: Into Australian Parliament House? Into the House of Representatives?
PRIME MINISTER: I live there. Parliament's due to sit and Barnaby Joyce, you know, doesn't really trouble the scorers when he's there, so, I find his comments pretty interesting.
JOURNALIST: Ask you about the Suburban Rail Loop – It's due to go literally underneath our feet, just about 500 metres that way. Needs $11 billion to actually get up from the Commonwealth – you've committed 2.2 – will you commit any more money?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, what we've done is commit to the funding that we put in place at the last election. See, one of the differences is we say we'll do something and then we do it. The other side -
JOURNALIST: Took you a while to get there.
PRIME MINISTER: No, not at all. We did what we said we would do and we make sure that infrastructure spending as well stacks up. We take the advice from Infrastructure Australia. We don't have colour-coded spreadsheets and so our funding has been made available – we'll continue to work constructively with Victoria on not just that project, but on the airport project and other road projects right around Victoria. I'll make this point. When I was the Minister, before that horror 2014 Budget, we had $3 billion for Victoria for the Metro project. We had someone on the board of the Metro project. It would have been open now and people would have been travelling on it for many years. It would have been open for years. And that would have put Victoria in a much better position. But under the former government, Victoria was starved of investment. Despite the fact that Melbourne is a growing city and Victoria is a growing state, they got under 10%. It got down to about 7% of national infrastructure investment from the Commonwealth, even though they represent one in four Australians. That wasn't fair. Under my Government, Victoria will always get its fair share.
JOURNALIST: When Catherine King actually announced that that funding was released, she said that it had to be spent on very specific things, but wouldn't go into detail into what those were. Can you shed any light onto what the conditions are of that 2.2 billion.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, with due respect, I was a very good infrastructure Minister in my own view, but we got a lot done here in Victoria. But as for the micro things of contracts between Victoria and the Commonwealth, that's a question for Minister King.
JOURNALIST: Do you think your government has actually delivered on housing in this term enough to satisfy voters? And can we expect any more housing policy announcements?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we've been out there, in spite of the Noalition as I call them. The Liberals, the Nationals and the Greens combined to block three of our major legislative programs when it comes to housing. They deferred for a long time the Housing Australia Future fund – aimed at $10 billion for affordable and public housing – as well as emergency accommodation for women and children escaping domestic violence. They then blocked the legislation for the Build to Rent scheme giving incentive to private developers for private rentals. And then they blocked and the latter two only passed the Parliament last December. Our Help to Buy scheme, which is about helping Australians into home ownership. We have a $32 billion Homes for Australians plan which is now in place – it's a comprehensive plan to boost supply. We're working with state and territory governments as well. Here in Victoria, the Social Housing Accelerator payments have resulted in homes that I've been to in places like Prahran that have been built and opened and people living in them as a result of that funding that we brought forward in the Budget. In addition to that, we're working with state and territories and local government when it comes to planning. We need approvals, we need higher densities including appropriate development around public transport links and that will be important going forward in order to achieve that objective of increased housing supply. We'll have more to say about housing during the election campaign. Clare O'Neil is a very proud Victorian, represents a seat just next door to here and we'll have more to say over coming months.
JOURNALIST: Why was MP Dai Le not invited to a citizenship ceremony with people from her own electorate at Olympic Park, but Labor candidate Tu Le was?
PRIME MINISTER: In Homebush?
JOURNALIST: Yes.
PRIME MINISTER: I wasn’t invited either, and so –
JOURNALIST: Is that your electorate though?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, nor’s Homebush – I’ll give you the big tip.
JOURNALIST: Would you call it political interference in a citizenship ceremony?
PRIME MINISTER: No, complete nonsense. This is a complete non-story. This was a big citizenship ceremony in Homebush which is in the electorate of Reid, nowhere else – the electorate of Reid. Not even next to Fowler. Reid is in fact next to my electorate of Grayndler, and Grayndler citizens – there's more citizens as a result of that event or people from the Sutherland Shire. This is a catch up that's occurring and what's incredible, I find, is that there'd be some issue with people who have been eligible for citizenship for some time but hadn't been able to receive it either because they're working or delays at councils for whatever reason. I want people to pledge their allegiance to Australia. That's a good thing and the fact that these citizenship ceremonies are going ahead is a good thing. And all of the mayors for anywhere that was within – if people were getting their citizenship – they were all invited. Dai Le for reasons that I find very unusual isn't just the Federal Member for Fowler – she ran for council last year and is the Deputy Mayor of Fairfield as well. The Mayor of Fairfield was certainly invited as was appropriate. It was at arm's length by the department and it's a good thing that people are committing to become Australian citizens.
JOURNALIST: Let me ask you about an electorate you know and love – Chisholm – are you worried about it given Dr Katie Allen is back potentially challenging Carina?
PRIME MINISTER: Not at all. Katie Allen of course wasn't successful in Higgins. The first person to lose Higgins for the Liberal Party since it was created. Carina Garland is an amazing local member. I know Carina well. I've known her since before she became the Member for Chisholm. I know how hard she has worked for this electorate. This electorate has benefited by having a Labor Government, a Labor Government that's committed to proper funding for healthcare, for education. A Labor government that's committed to making a positive difference to people's lives. A Labor government that's delivered tax cuts for every single taxpayer, that's delivered energy bill relief for every household, that's delivered cheaper child care, that's delivered cheaper medicines and is now delivering on Medicare.
JOURNALIST: PM, analysts say the actions of the Chinese naval task force highlight Australia's vulnerability to an attack by sea. Does this event have the Government rethinking its key Defence priorities?
PRIME MINISTER: No. We had our Defence Review, which went through, that looked at Defence Force posture. And if you look at where our investments are going, they're very much focused on naval investment as well. The Chief of the Defence Force, of course, Admiral David Johnson, is doing an extraordinary job. And we have considered, as an island continent – common sense tells you – that the Navy is pretty important for Australia.
JOURNALIST: ASIO has stripped an ADF officer's security clearance over concerns he's more loyal to Israel than to Australia. This officer has been in the ADF for nineteen years. Have you been briefed and is there any risk that classified information has been exposed?
PRIME MINISTER: Sorry, I don't comment on national security issues. I don't comment on national security issues in press conferences. Thank you very much.
JOURNALIST: Can I get a quick question on the RSLs, a little bit more of a local angle, but Victoria's RSLs are really struggling to fund anything for ANZAC ceremonies, Last Post ceremony on the weekends. They're looking for funding – would that be something that the Federal Government would tip in for?
PRIME MINISTER: I can just say that the RSLs play a really important role in local communities and it's something that's a source of pride that wherever you go in Australia, there are memorials and events in which we pay respect to those men and women who wear our uniform and have defended our country. Last year on Anzac Day, it was one of the privileges of my life to spend three days walking the Kokoda Track with Prime Minister Marape of Papua New Guinea. We attended the Dawn Service at Isurava. Our friend here was with us and it was incredibly moving. And for everyone who was there, it's a time that we'll never forget. And it was just a chance to reflect on the incredible sacrifice so many Australians, of course, have made the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of our nation. We should never take that for granted. And we should always pay tribute to those brave men and women. Thank you.