Radio interview with Minister Butler, 5AA – 5 May 2025

GRAEME GOODINGS, HOST: Health Minister, Mark Butler, good morning to you. Congratulations.
 
MARK BUTLER, MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE: Thank you, Graeme. Good morning to you and your listeners.
 
GOODINGS: Obviously you expected to win. Did you or were you surprised by the majority?
 
BUTLER: It was always going to be a tight election. I was quietly confident that we would get there, but I think the size of the victory has been pretty resounding. Frankly, it's historic. No first-term prime minister has not gone backwards. Very successful prime ministers like Bob Hawke and John Howard had very tough elections to achieve a second term. In 1984 and 1998, both of them went backwards. I think it was a pretty historic result, but we're humbled by it and we're focused on getting back to work. I got on a plane at 6 am this morning and I'm back in my office in Canberra. The health system doesn't wait for federal elections to come and go. We've all got work to do and we're getting about doing that work.
 
GOODINGS: There's no doubt that an election campaign, that's 5 weeks that literally gets in the way of running the country. Now you're getting back to that. What are your top 3 priorities for your health portfolio?
 
BUTLER: We talked a lot about health. Turning bulk billing around for people without a concession card is a very important priority for me. We've already done a lot of work for bulk billing for people with a concession card. Rolling out more Urgent Care Clinics is a very significant priority. We also made promises in South Australia to continue the work on expanding the Flinders Medical Centre to expand training opportunities at that precinct as well. We've got a lot of commitments that we've made. They're going to make a real difference, particularly to the health system. I'm really looking forward, if I get the opportunity again, obviously, to get down to it and start implementing those promises.
 
GOODINGS: Now, Minister, the last time we had you on, we had the Stoma Association call in. They asked for a lifting of the freeze on funding for stoma patients. You said you hadn't seen their request. Have you had time to see it yet or heard about it?
 
BUTLER: The caretaker convention has literally only been lifted in the last 30 minutes or so. We were in caretaker mode until then. I'll be going up to the Department of Health sometime today and meeting with the Secretary to get a sense of what has been happening during the past five weeks while we've been in caretaker mode, and one of the files I'll be asking for will be that one.
 
GOODINGS: We've had a lot of calls to the station over the last few months regarding cuts to pathology services. Evidently, people that go and have pathology services say there's a sticker up on the wall saying from July 1, the government is cutting $356 million from pathology services, halving the Medicare rebate for vitamin B12 and urine tests. They want to know why that is happening?
 
BUTLER: This is a pretty dishonest campaign being run by the very big, big, big pathology companies. We implemented some changes that were the product of expert advice, expert clinical advice. There is a sort of expert group of doctors and clinicians who advise the government, whether they're Labor or Liberal, about how the Medicare schedule works, and they provided some advice to try and cut down what they describe as unnecessary tests. Now, there's been a pretty misleading campaign run by the big pathology companies saying people who have a clinical need for this type of testing are not going to get it through Medicare. They will. There's no question about that, and what the big pathology companies also fail to put into their poster is that for the first time in many, years, I've provided indexation, or rebate increases for pathology tests, which they've been complaining about for some time. I think it has been more than 20 years since the Medicare rebates had been increased for pathology. I increased that. They don't put that in their poster, of course. And they try to suggest that these changes are political changes when in actual fact what they are is implementing the best advice we have from doctors about how to use the Medicare system.
 
GOODINGS: Now, off the subject of health, but more on the state of South Australia, being a smaller state with fewer electorates, it is very important that we have a strong voice in Canberra. We have had a strong voice in the past with yourself and Penny Wong and Don Farrell and the like and Amanda Rishworth. Is there any guarantees that, I mean, there's been an overwhelming support for Labor, increased majority. Is there any fear that we'll lose strong representation at the top level within the Labor Party in the corridors of Canberra?
 
BUTLER: Look, the Prime Minister has already been very clear that if he was re-elected, Penny Wong and Don Farrell, as members of his leadership team, would remain in place. That's a terrific thing because both of them are just so important for, not just our state but, our country. I know Amanda has been doing just terrific work, and I'm sure she's very well regarded here in Canberra as well as in her own electorate in South Australia more broadly. We'll want to see her continue her terrific work. But ultimately, whether we get there is a matter for the caucus and a matter for the Prime Minister. I know Amanda and I would both very much love to continue the work that we've been doing on behalf of our state, but that will be determined over coming days, Graeme.
 
GOODINGS: A question that keeps coming up is regarding staffing our hospitals, staffing aged care centres and the like. Are you looking at that area? Is that a priority at all?
 
BUTLER: Staffing aged care particularly has been a huge priority for us. Frankly, I've worked with aged care for more than 30 years now, been going to aged care facilities very, very regularly for all of that time. And one of the real challenges we've had is that aged care staff, frankly, have been underpaid. You've been able to go and get a job in retail or hospitality and earn more than you would in an aged care facility during, I think, some of the most important work we have in our society. During the last term in government, the one just gone, we provided huge increases to aged care funding to fund wage increases, frankly, for nurses and for carers. And what aged care operators are telling me now is that has made a massive difference to their ability to recruit staff and to keep them. To stop nurses leaving to go and work in hospitals because they would have earned so much more working in a hospital than doing aged care. Aged care operators are also telling me it means that they're using fewer agency staff. Agency staff are quite expensive for the aged care operator, but they also don't have the knowledge of the residents in an aged care facility, and that's the continuity of care that is so important. Knowing the wife or the husband or the daughter or the son who comes to visit their loved one who's in the aged care facility. That's made a huge difference to a sector where we frankly are going to need more and more staff as the population continues to age.
 
GOODINGS: Finally, Minister, there is a picture of you in The Advertiser with Charlotte Walker, who has won a seat in the Senate. It would seem to highlight the fact that it is very important, no matter how successful you are, to reinvigorate the party at all times?
 
BUTLER: She's going to be terrific if she gets there. I'm not sure we've finished the counting, but we're very hopeful that Charlotte will get to join the Senate team. The other thing that the Labor Party has been able to do over the time I've been involved in it is to bring women through so that our caucus now reflects society. It's about half women. It's actually a little bit more than a half of our caucus were women. That's taken a lot of effort over the last 30 years. Thirty years ago, I think our caucus was about 20% women and 80% men, and the Liberal Party was about the same. But because of the changes we've made, we've lifted that to essentially parity, so 50–50, but the Liberal Party's barely moved over 30 years. I think that's reflected in the sorts of policies that they've been putting forward to the Australian people and a range of other elements of their political attraction.
 
GOODINGS: Well, Minister, thanks for your time today. Congratulations on being re-elected, but we will certainly be in touch with you to keep you to account if our listeners aren't happy with what's happening.
 
BUTLER: I would expect nothing less. Thanks, Graeme.
 
GOODINGS: Good on you, Mark. That's Mark Butler, Health Minister, Aged Care Minister, on being re-elected, the future of the party, and the possible election to the Senate of Charlotte Walker, who just turned 21.