PAUL CULLIVER, HOST: The Minister for Health and Aged Care, Mark Butler, has been in the region today, in fact, he has joined us on the line. Good afternoon to you, Minister. How are you?
MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE, MARK BUTLER: Very well. Good to talk to you this afternoon.
CULLIVER: What brings you to our region today?
BUTLER: I've been visiting a range of places in Paterson, the electorate, after having a number of discussions with Meryl Swanson about healthcare in the Hunter Valley. We've had a terrific range of meetings at retirement villages, at general practices, at an urgent care clinic there, and at a pharmacy talking about what we're doing to strengthen Medicare and make medicines cheaper. But we've also spoken about what we can do in the future, because we know that there's a lot more to do to get our healthcare system up to the level that really the community expects.
CULLIVER: What are some of those points of feedback that you've been hearing today?
BUTLER: It's tough to find a GP in the Hunter Valley and it's particularly tough to find a GP who bulk bills. We're seeing that across the country but the rate of bulk billing in Newcastle and the Hunter Valley is lower than you'll see in most parts of the country, certainly lower than most parts of Sydney, for example. Our efforts to turn around bulk billing have started to work. Bulk billing was in freefall when we came to government. We tripled the bulk billing incentive that GPs receive when they do bulk billing, a pension or a child or a concession card holder and that is making a difference. We've seen bulk billing turn around across the country. We've seen almost 5 million additional free visits to the GP since last November, but we know we have to do more. The bulk billing rate is still too low in this part of the country. That’s why I was keen to talk to GPs, keen to talk to Meryl, who's on the ground talking to her community all the time about this, about what else we can do.
CULLIVER: What are the ideas, what's on the table here if those incentives have been increased, as you've talked about and they have and you are seeing uptake in other parts of Australia, what's going to work here?
BUTLER: There is also an uptake here, in the electorate of Paterson, there's been an increase of 2.8 per cent in bulk billing. About three out of every four visits to the GP are bulk billed now but we'd like to see that a little higher. In some parts of the region, in Newcastle itself, the bulk billing rates lower than that. We want to see the bulk billing incentive changes demonstrate their worth for a little while longer. It's not even 12 months since we introduced them. We've also increased the Medicare rebate pretty substantially over the last two years. The two biggest increases since the early 1990s. We are investing more money into Medicare but we also need to change the way in which Medicare operates, because it hasn't really been reformed much since the 1980s and we know the patient profile today is very different to what it was 40 years ago.
CULLIVER: So obviously we're speaking in October we expect there will have to be an election at some point in the first half of next year. Is it something where we're going to be going to an election with the Labor Party announcing a Medicare reform platform?
BUTLER: I'm not in a position to announce election policy now. I have said that what we've done so far is making a real difference to millions of Australians. We've got about 5 million additional free visits to the GP. We've got urgent care clinics rolling out that have already seen over 800,000 patients, every single one of them bulk billed, but importantly taking pressure off hospital emergency departments. We know that medicine prices are going down as well. But for all the difference that is making, and it is making a real difference, we know we've got to do more. We're determined, the Prime Minister is determined to continue the task of turning around a decade of cuts and neglect, which is really what we saw in Medicare over the past ten years.
CULLIVER: And speaking to the issue of bulk billing, ultimately, that is a decision by each GP clinic as to whether they offer bulk billing or not. Have there been some specific reasons or sort of financials given to you by GPs in this region that sort of, you know, lay out the issue for them?
BUTLER: The big driver was the freeze to the Medicare rebate that Peter Dutton kicked off in his first budget as Health Minister ten years ago. The Medicare rebate was frozen for six years for GPs. That's the major source of income for general practices. It's sort of no surprise if you freeze their income while the costs of operating a general practice are continuing to rise, that you see the sort of financial pressure that we have seen. That's why we were so determined to inject some additional money into general practice. I was really clear, unapologetically clear, that my priority coming in as Health Minister two years ago was turning around general practice. It was in the most parlous state, I think it had been in for 40 years since the introduction of Medicare and we were starting to see the impact of general practise not working as we would like it to work. You know, the results of that end up showing up at the hospital emergency department because people can't get the care they need close to home in the community with a local GP.
CULLIVER: Mark Butler is your guest this afternoon here on ABC Newcastle, the Health Minister visiting the region and the Paterson electorate this afternoon and this morning. Can I ask you about the Newcastle Lake Mac Urgent Care Clinic? It was announced back in June. What's the progress there?
BUTLER: I'm advised that the primary health network for your region, the Hunter New England Primary Health Network, is running the tender there. We make sure it's kept at arm's length. The tender has closed, I'm advised, and we're pretty close to having the primary health network make a decision on that tender. I expect that in the very near future, and I've committed to making sure that urgent care clinic is up and operating before the end of 2024. So, we're really probably talking weeks.
CULLIVER: Obviously we are amidst a royal visit, in Canberra yesterday, of course, we saw King Charles II and Camilla and of course, international headlines now after Senator Lidia Thorpe interrupted that reception, shouting at King Charles, saying things like calling for a treaty and yelling, “you are not our king.” What was your reaction to what Senator Lidia Thorpe did yesterday?
BUTLER: I'd like to say I was surprised, but I wasn't. I'd seen her there, and she's obviously got a bit of a reputation for that sort of behaviour. Even though it wasn't a complete surprise, it was incredibly disrespectful, and not the behaviour you'd expect of a Member of Parliament elected by the people of Victoria to go and attend that building in the best interests of the people of that state. We had just heard a really terrific speech from the King, who is obviously someone who has a deep affection for this country. He first visited here almost 60 years ago as a student, completing his schooling at Timbertop down in Victoria. I think this is his 17th visit to the country. We'd heard a very warm, very generous speech in which he made a really significant point about the importance of reconciliation and the way in which he had been received by traditional owners or First Nations Australians in the decades he's been visiting this country. It was a really unfortunate end to a very warm, a very generous event.
CULLIVER: Despite the perhaps way in which the senator went about that particular protest do you still think it's pretty legitimate to at least have a conversation and raise issues around not only the continuance of Australia being part of the Commonwealth, but also questions about the monarchy's role in the treatment of indigenous peoples through the decades?
BUTLER: Of course, these are all legitimate points of discussion in a country like ours that has a long way to go towards achieving reconciliation. Aunty Violet, who was the traditional owner representing the Ngunnawal people, the traditional owners of the land on which Parliament House is built, she warmly welcomed King Charles and Queen Camilla, and she made the point after Lidia Thorpe made her protest, I think her words were there's a time and a place, and that was not it in Aunty Violet's words. And I couldn't agree more.
CULLIVER: Minister, you have been visiting in the Paterson electorate today. It is effectively a marginal electorate, possibly even more so given the redistribution. Obviously conversations with Meryl Swanson and the candidates that will put up their hands is something we'll be having in the next few months. But what do you think the work is the Labor Party need to do to retain that seat at the next election?
BUTLER: First of all, we have a terrific candidate in local member, Meryl Swanson. She's from the area. She grew up in it. She's worked in it. She's raised a family in it and I can tell you she is a relentlessly advocate for her community, particularly in health. She tells me this is the number one issue raised with her in her electorate, access to high quality healthcare at an affordable price. We’ve got to keep on doing what we said we would do at the last election, and what we’ve started to do in these last two and a half years, that is strengthen Medicare, drive down the price of medicines and all of the other areas beyond my portfolio, obviously, that we're trying to make a real difference in really tough times.
CULLIVER: Minister, always appreciate your time. Thank you so much.
BUTLER: Thank you.
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