Press conference with Minister Butler, Adelaide – 2 November 2025

MARK BUTLER, MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGEING, MINISTER FOR DISABILITY AND THE NDIS: Thanks for coming out on Sunday morning. Thank you to Dr Loh and the other doctors and staff here at the Trinity Medical Centre, a very large, well-known practice here in Port Adelaide. When we came to government three and a half years ago, bulk billing for GP clinics in particular was in free fall. That wasn’t my description, that was the word used by the College of GPs. The reason for it was very clear: there had been a six-year freeze on Medicare rebates, and unsurprisingly if government squeezed the income of doctors, that would put pressure on their ability to bulk bill. When we came to government, I as Health Minister, said we had no higher priority than rebuilding general practice and turning bulk billing around for patients. And in the time since, we've delivered the three biggest increases to the Medicare rebate since Paul Keating was Prime Minister – the first, second and third biggest increases to the Medicare rebate. In 2023, we tripled the bulk billing incentive that that GPs would receive for bulk billing pensioners, concession card holders and children under 16. And that turned bulk billing around for those 11 million Australians, and that rate now sits at about 92 per cent. But bulk billing for people without a concession card continued to slide because of that financial pressure that had happened in the previous decade.
 
Yesterday was a milestone day for Medicare. For the first time ever, the government has extended bulk billing incentive support to every single Australian. And on top of that, have made available an extra incentive payment to practices like this that choose to bulk bill all of their patients all of the time. I'm delighted that Trinity Medical Centre is one of the 1,050 that have already told us, we're just one day in, but have already told us that last week they were charging some gap fees, but next week they will be a 100 per cent fully bulk billing clinic. That number is growing every single day, but I'm delighted that as patients roll into this clinic today, because it's open on a Sunday, but for many others that go to their GP clinic on Monday, tomorrow, they'll find that gap fees have been removed. And because of the government's record investment in bulk billing, bulk billing is starting to turn around again for Australians. I'm going to ask Dr Loh to say a few words, then I'm happy to take questions.
 
DR DEREK LOH, TRINITY MEDICAL CENTRE: I’d like to thank Minister Butler for coming to visit our clinic. I always believe that bulk billing is a good way to practise medicine because we don't want patients to make decisions about their health care based on their financial circumstances, but more what their health needs. We couldn't bulk bill previously because the gap between concession card holders and non-concession card holders was getting big, and it wasn't financially viable for us. But now that we've increased the new subsidies and incentives, we are able to bulk bill all patients.
 
I used to have some patients that were coming to see me once a month when we were bulk billing and once we started charging a gap, I noticed they were coming much less often, maybe once a year. This incentive will help patients to prioritise their health needs more than their financial circumstances.
 
JOURNALIST: Dr Loh, maybe we just keep you up for one moment. Are you financially better off as a practice now moving to fully bulk billed?
 
LOH: Yes, and with the extra loading incentive for fully bulk building, we are better off as a practice.
 
JOURNALIST: Are you surprised more clinics aren't in that position?
 
LOH: I suppose it depends on what sort of gap they charge. If they charge a higher gap than the incentive, then they wouldn't be interested in taking up this incentive.
 
BUTLER: Thanks, Doctor. Can I make the point to your question that the incentives and the additional payment for practices that went 100 per cent bulk billing were carefully calibrated. We are confident that three quarters of general practices around Australia are financially better off if they take up the investment that started to flow yesterday than if they do not. Now, we don’t expect that every practice will do that immediately. We’re pretty confident this will build over time. As I said, the number of clinics that are letting us know as government that they're moving to 100 per cent bulk billing is increasing every single day, and I expect that to continue over coming weeks.
 
JOURNALIST: Minister, the AMA said they welcomed this new move, but did want to see Medicare rebates for longer consults be increased. Is that something that's on the cards?
 
BUTLER: We'll keep working with the AMA about the structure of the Medicare benefits schedule. We've done some very good work on a range of different reforms in the three years I've been the Health Minister. We introduced a new long consult of over 60 minutes, which has been taken up very broadly. It's quite an attractive payment. We calculated it carefully. It's already been taken up very broadly for patients with quite complex needs, taken up much more by female GPs, and that was the message the AMA and the College of GPs were giving to us amongst a range of other reforms as well. I've been clear publicly, and with the AMA, this reform process to ensure the Medicare system reflects the needs of patients today rather than the sort of patients that doctors were getting in the ‘80s and ‘90s is an ongoing piece of work. But we were unapologetic about the fact that we had to prioritise affordability and turn bulk billing around, because as Dr Loh said, too many patients were declining to go to the doctor or deciding not to go to the doctor because of cost. And we can't have people making health decisions based on cost.
 
JOURNALIST: Is there any concern that patients will try to get into a bulk billing practice but there might just not be any available appointments because of the demand shifting? Have you considered that?
 
BUTLER: There's already a very big number of clinics that are shifting to bulk billing. And patients will take an interest in whether their GP and their practice, are taking up this offer as well. That is why I'm confident this will build over time. We do know we need to recruit more doctors, and so a big part of our Strengthening Medicare agenda is not just more bulk billing, more Urgent Care Clinics, it's more doctors as well. We're bringing more in from overseas from countries where we have high confidence. Those numbers are higher than they've ever been before. And really pleasingly, we're training more junior doctors as GPs this year than Australia has ever done before. Last year was a record, this year broke that record, next year we’ll break the record again. We know we need more doctors, we need more practices taking up bulk billing, but I'm confident we're headed in the right direction.
 
JOURNALIST: Do you have a figure on how many GPs you would expect to see sign up to this in the first six months?
 
BUTLER: No, we haven't set a figure for six months. We've been relatively conservative about our projections on this. We want to get to 90 per cent bulk billed by the end of the decade. This has been a very pleasing initial response though. About 1,600 clinics already fully bulk billed out of the 6,500 across the country. Already another 1,050 have said that today or tomorrow, if they open they'll shift to 100 per cent bulk billing, and as I said, that number is increasing every single day. I'm sure a lot of clinics are taking the decision without informing government, they're just doing it. And I'm sure, as well, that within practices that can't go 100 per cent bulk billing, they will be bulk billing more patients because of the additional incentives that flowed yesterday.
 
JOURNALIST: How soon do you expect to see improvements within the system from the bulk billing incentive?
 
BUTLER: Tomorrow.
 
JOURNALIST: Just onto another topic, if that's all right? The Nationals are today expected to formally abandon a net zero target by 2050. What does that say about the future of the Coalition?
 
BUTLER: It's a very important moment for Sussan Ley and the Liberal Party as the senior members of the Coalition. The business community, only again in the last week, has said how important the net zero commitment by the country is for business certainty and investment, particularly in important sectors like energy, manufacturing and mining. This is a moment for Sussan Ley to put her foot down. We can't have another position where a party of government moves away from the most important investment signal the Australian economy has. But yet again, it appears the Coalition is going to be led by a party that is allergic to the future, that drag the country back 30 or 40 years ago, divided in itself by people who don't believe in climate change and those who might believe in climate change that just don't think it's worth doing anything about.
 
JOURNALIST: Are you concerned that the Nats’ position on net zero will make it harder to win Coalition support to get your government's environment laws through parliament before Christmas?
 
BUTLER: This is a balanced set of laws that Murray Watt has brought before the parliament that follows some really deep consultation with industry, with environmental groups and with state governments, particularly those that have a lot of development in their jurisdiction. And I'm confident this is the right set of laws for the country. It's time to do this. The report that is the basis of the reform of our environment laws was delivered five years ago. No one has been able to deliver these reforms through the Parliament. Murray Watt has brought the right package of laws to the Parliament. It’s time that the Parliament did this work. Thanks, everyone.