I'll just start by saying that the coalition understands the cost of everything, but it never understands the value, particularly the value of health care. For Labor, the value of health care is in our bones and has been for generations. We introduced Medibank and then Medicare. I started my practice on the same day that Medicare started in Australia, and it's been the backbone of health care in Australia for the last 40 years. Sussan Ley, the Leader of the Opposition, was responsible for a huge drop in funding for health care, reductions in bulk-billing and reductions in access to health care, and she should be ashamed of her time as a health minister in this country. For 10 years, the coalition did nothing but cut back on health, yet Labor, in its first term, made some really dramatic changes in health care.
I'll start with 60-day prescribing, which was fought tooth and nail by the coalition. They never understood it. They never understood the importance of increasing prescribing from 30 days to 60 days. It made huge financial gains for families. It also saved time and effort and was a great boon to patients around Australia. The coalition never understood it and fought it tooth and nail.
They've fought any changes to healthcare policy that have improved access to women's health care or that have improved access to some of the new medications—for example, dupilumab, which is a remarkable medication used for severe eczema. The coalition wouldn't fund it through the PBS. As soon as we came to power, we funded it through the PBS and changed the lives of many of the kids with severe eczema that I see. It changed their whole trajectory. They were able to go to school full time. They didn't have to go in and out of hospital for wet dressings and sedation because of the severity of their eczema. It made a huge difference.
We have changed the lives of many children with cystic fibrosis, through markedly increasing access to the new genetically targeted cystic fibrosis medications, doubling the life expectancy of people with cystic fibrosis in this country almost overnight. The coalition understands the costs but never understands the value of health care.
The bulk-billing incentives that we introduced in November 2023 have dramatically improved the bulk-billing rates of general practitioners in this country. And it's important to know that the coalition fudged their figures around bulk-billing by including in their bulk-billing statistics the pathology testing during the pandemic. That dramatically increased the apparent bulk-billing rates, which were in fact not true. It was the pathology tests that did it.
We have made incredible improvements in access to some of the genetically targeted treatments for childhood diseases—as I mentioned, cystic fibrosis. But, for some of the inherited neurological disorders like spinal muscular atrophy, there have been dramatic improvements in access to genomically targeted medications, which are life changing for the children and for their families. We've funded Omico, the Australian genomic cancer medicine centre run by Professor David Thomas at Sydney university, improving access to genetically targeted treatments for cancer and improving life expectancies dramatically. We've funded the Zero Childhood Cancer Program, which for years tried to get federal government funding from the coalition. But we, the Labor government, funded it in our first term. In our second term we will do more to improve equitable access to genomically targeted treatments around Australia by funding these projects.
The coalition, unfortunately, doesn't understand the importance of access to primary care. Our urgent care centres have dramatically improved access to primary care, particularly for people who are sick with chronic illness and have acute exacerbations. The member for Robertson has already mentioned some of them. The urgent care centres have made dramatic improvements in access, particularly after hours. They've also reduced pressure on our emergency departments—a dramatic change.
The coalition doesn't understand health care. It doesn't understand the importance of equitable access to health care. Unfortunately for them, the Australian population understood that and walked away from the coalition at the last election—I think in big part due to the coalition's very poor health policy. In fact they did no work on health policy at all. All we got from them was 'me too'. 'I think we'll agree with that,' said the coalition health spokesperson, but they really did no work on health policy. (Time expired)
