Television interview with Minister Butler on ABC Afternoon Briefing – 29 October 2025

PATRICIA KARVELAS, HOST: It's also a key week for some of the Government's commitments on health. The bulk billing changes promised by Labor at the election are set to go into effect this Saturday, and the government has announced new medicines to be added to the PBS The Health Minister Mark Butler joins me this afternoon. Welcome.
 
MARK BUTLER, MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGEING, MINISTER FOR DISABILITY AND THE NDIS: Patricia.
 
KARVELAS: Let's start on underlying inflation. It's risen for the first time in almost three years to three percent. Like that is concerning, that is the measure that the RBA is obsessed with. It's at the top of the RBA's range. You as a government must be concerned?
 
BUTLER: As the Treasurer said in the Parliament and said in response to the data being released, the inflation trajectory is not linear. It's not linear here in Australia and it hasn't been in any other developed economy either. You've seen core inflation jumping in pretty much every other major advanced economy. We certainly take comfort from the fact it's still in the band. There was an increase outside of the band in headline inflation, as the Treasurer said, because of a one-off change to state energy rebates. But, of course, we're doing everything we can to keep that inflation down within that band of 2 to 3 per cent.
 
KARVELAS: But food costs increased by 15 per cent, insurance by 20 per cent, electricity costs are obviously overwhelming, and they've been the theme of the week if you look at the Tomago issue as well, 40 per cent over the last year. You can see that people would be pretty alarmed by these figures.
 
BUTLER: I wouldn't necessarily say alarmed. We've been very clear that we expect this journey to get inflation under control, not to be linear. There will be numbers that jump around a little bit. We're pretty confident, though, that it's broadly in the right direction. And you see structurally it now being within the band for quite a considerable period of time. We've seen an ability here in Australia to get inflation under control that would be the envy of the rest of the world. I remember 30 years ago, the job of getting inflation under control came at the expense of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of jobs, double-digit unemployment, particularly for young people. We have been able to get inflation under control without seeing the big jump in unemployment we've seen in other countries, and we've seen throughout most similar periods in Australian history.
 
KARVELAS: People can't really expect an interest rate cut, though, can they? We were hoping there would be one. Doesn't look like it can happen now, does it?
 
BUTLER: That's a matter for the Reserve Bank as you know, Patricia, it's not a matter for the government, certainly not a matter for the Health Minister.
 
KARVELAS: Expectations were high. You know, as a government, you're in the senior ranks of the government. This is not the story that you wanted to end the year on.
 
BUTLER: We've never been complacent about this. We know that there are still global pressures in the economy, worldwide, and they are going to bear upon the Australian economy as they are every other one. We're certainly very relieved to see interest rates coming down over the last several months, relieved to see inflation after some very hard work by government, but importantly by the community and business as well, to start to try and keep a lid on prices.
 
KARVELAS: Any more energy rebates, then? They're being kind of wound back. Is there a case at your level to continue them?
 
BUTLER: We don't have plans to do that right now. They've been very important for the Australian community, for households and for businesses. They were opposed by the Liberal Party when we were putting them in place. They're a pretty radical agenda, including caps on gas and coal prices, which, again, the Coalition called out, but we were able to get state government agreement to including Liberal state governments in important jurisdictions.
 
We've certainly done a lot in this area. We're making sure we continue to expand supply in the energy space because at the end of the day, that is the important thing, to get new energy into the system as we see these old, ageing coal-fired power stations closed down.
 
KARVELAS: Okay, but you said no plans at the moment on the subsidies for energy. Is that something that the government's watching?
 
BUTLER: We don't have any plans to do anything more than we've done, but what we have done over the last several years has been very considerable.
 
KARVELAS: Let's talk about health. Some conservative MPs have told Parliament they're concerned that this legislation, which is aimed at helping people who have stillbirths, and I know it's hard for people who have experienced this that are watching, and many people do, to take their pre-arranged paid parental leave. So that's the legislation. But people have spoken out about this incentivising potentially late-term abortions. Some of the comments are pretty inflammatory.
 
BUTLER: Very and pretty distressing, I know, from the reaction that I've already heard about the debates over the last 24 hours or so. The definitions here are very clear. A stillbirth is the loss of a foetus or a baby through a natural spontaneous event. Miscarriage before 20 weeks, stillbirth after 20 weeks, gestation. A medical termination or a surgical termination, as the name suggests, is something very different. It's a decision taken by parents, particularly by the mother. To try to conflate the two things is, I think, a very cynical, deeply distressing political exercise. The men who are doing this, and they are all men, know the difference between stillbirth and abortion.
 
KARVELAS: Have you reached out to them?
 
BUTLER: No, I haven't. It's only really come to my attention over the last couple of hours since question time. It is starting to bubble around here. We're getting feedback from outside of Parliament that this is being really distressing. And I think these men know the distinction. I'm concerned that what they're doing is deeply cynical politicking. How often when we're talking about constraining women's rights, constraining women's support through these incredibly important and at times distressing events in their life, it's men leading the charge. I haven't heard a Coalition woman go into the chamber and make these arguments we've heard from Andrew Hastie and Barnaby Joyce and others. It's all the men on the right wing of the Liberal and the National Party and I just say to them: enough, just stop it. This is with about 3,000 families in our community that go through one of the most distressing events imaginable. We're just trying to give them a bit of support. You know the definitions are clear. Just stop it.
 
KARVELAS: I want to talk about your signature expansion of bulk billing, which is to start this weekend. How can we have faith that your promise of nine out of ten appointments being bulk billed by the end of the decade isn't the same as the government's, you know, other promises like the 1.2 million homes which are not on track to be met?
 
BUTLER: I've been pleasantly surprised at how quickly practices are taking the decision to shift. There are already 1,000 practices There's about 7,000 in the country. 1,000 practices have already told the government that this week they're charging gap fees and next week they'll start bulk billing every single patient that comes through their door. Now there's already 1,600 practices that already do that so we're getting big numbers. I talked about one in my own electorate that I'd been challenged on by the Coalition in Question Time a couple of months ago. It's just one of a thousand that have already said they're going to bulk bill every patient that comes through their practices.
 
The reason why we're confident this is going to work is that it makes sense for practices and doctors themselves. We calibrated this very carefully. We have access to every bit of billing data that they have, whether it's the Medicare rebate or a gap fee. We know what they're charging, and we know that three quarters of practices will be better off under the funding we're rolling out on Saturday and thereafter than they are under their existing arrangements.
 
KARVELAS: And just talk to me about the monitoring of this. Obviously, we have, like, the processes of when you find out how it's being taken up. Like any rollout, it doesn't always go according to plan. Are you prepared to pivot? Because there are some who are arguing that this incentive won't actually meet the mark.
 
BUTLER: I've been really clear with doctors' groups, some of which have been a little sceptical about this in the lead-up, that they should not underestimate our determination to achieve this. In Canberra, for example, which you probably know is a pretty stubborn market to get bulk billing in.
 
KARVELAS: Yes, I'm trying to get bulk billed in this place. It's not easy.
 
BUTLER: We're going to intervene in the market. We're going to fund new practices that come into the ACT, set up here on the basis of being fully bulk billing. I'm not just going to sit by and let some markets really prohibit members in their community from being able to access bulk billed visits. I just want to be clear with doctors' groups, we're determined to do this. We think the settings we have right now are going to do it, but if there are particular markets in the country like Canberra where we're just not getting that increase that we need to see, then we'll look at taking action.
 
KARVELAS: What could that action look like?
 
BUTLER: What we've done in Canberra, for example.
 
KARVELAS: Intervening?
 
BUTLER: We'll support new practices coming into the market on the basis they're going to be fully bulk billing.
 
KARVELAS: I have to ask you, yesterday there was a significant decision. The Queensland Supreme Court has overturned the freeze on puberty blockers for adolescents with gender dysphoria. Are you pleased by that intervention by the court?
 
BUTLER: I've read reports of it. I haven't read the full decision by the Supreme Court. I've said,  whatever I think personally of the decision, as the Federal Health Minister, this is a matter for state health ministers to decide. These services are exclusively provided by state governments and the clinicians.
 
KARVELAS: But isn't it a denial to not have, under the provision that's now been overturned, isn't it a denial of basic rights for kids with gender dysphoria?
 
BUTLER: It was pretty clearly poor process. I think the Queensland Government has been called out on that. I think it was actually about consultation with the clinicians themselves, not with the families involved, and that reflects the technicalities of the legal agreement they were looking at. But I think it does just reinforce the importance of health authorities, whether it's the Commonwealth or the states, to think about the people who are being impacted by your decisions rather than just sort of in a very knee-jerk way announce something that will have that profound impact.
 
What we've done as a Commonwealth is to ask the National Health and Medical Research to look at this soberly, to look at this in the expert way they've been doing to develop clinical guidelines for decades and decades, which they have the statutory charter to do. This is a highly contested, evolving area of clinical practice and I want our best experts to look at this in an expert, evidence-based way. And they'll deliver advice to us by the middle of next year on the use of puberty blockers for adolescents in particular. I'd be gobsmacked if any state government, Labor or Liberal, didn't take that advice very seriously.
 
KARVELAS: We are out of time. Thank you so much.
 
BUTLER: Thanks, Patricia.