I also rise to speak on the Health Legislation Amendment (Improved Medicare Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2025. Our doctors and health professionals in Australia do life-saving and life-changing work every single day. They are hardworking professionals, committed to patient care, and, of course, we know that most of these health professionals do the right thing every day. In fact, they go above and beyond to serve their fellow Australians.
But we also know that some are not; not all are abiding by the Medicare rules. We place an enormous amount of trust in our healthcare professionals. In fact, we place our lives and the lives of the people we love the most in their hands. The Australian people too place an enormous amount of trust in us as a government to oversee the system of Medicare, which is so important and so embedded in the Australian way of life and all that we value in terms of our healthcare system and in choosing what we fund in a public policy sense. So it is essential that Medicare is not just always in a process of continual improvement but that we're working to protect the system to make sure that it is strong against any kind of threat or risk of misuse and that it's financially stable over the long term. Strengthening Medicare isn't just about expanding services and building the system; it's also about upholding the integrity of the system that millions of Australians rely upon every single day.
In November 2022, our Minister for Health and Ageing, Mark Butler, commissioned health economist Dr Pradeep Philip to lead an independent review of Medicare integrity and compliance. The findings of that review were clear: while most practitioners are doing the right thing, our systems need strengthening to better detect and prevent fraud, errors and misuse. In response to that review, our government established the Medicare Integrity Taskforce, funded through the 2023-24 and 2024-25 budgets to implement the Philip review's recommendations.
That's what this bill before us is seeking to do. It amends the National Health Act, the Health Insurance Act, the Human Services (Medicare) Act and the Dental Benefits Act and covers health insurance, Medicare, dental benefits and more to respond to a range of the issues identified in the Philip review. It ensures we can better detect and respond to fraud, strengthen investigative powers and reduce the Medicare claim window from two years to one, maintaining flexibility. Importantly, these changes will only affect a small number of providers, and it's those providers who already aren't doing the right thing. These changes will help us build a more protected and more sustainable Medicare system, one that delivers safe, high-quality care now and into the future.
These changes are very important. Strengthening Medicare is in our DNA as a Labor movement. We built Medicare. We are incredibly proud of the impact it has had on lives in Australia. In fact, we are the envy of the world. But we are also deeply ambitious for our Medicare system because we know how important it is for Australians, how hard it was to build and how important it is that we defend it. Medicare is the pride of Australia, a proud Labor legacy, and it will always be our mission in government to strengthen it and to build on it.
Indeed, when we came to government, this work was more urgent than ever after a decade of neglect by the previous coalition government. When we were first elected, it had never been harder or more expensive to find a doctor. Bulk-billing was in freefall. General practice was under pressure after a decade of coalition cuts and neglect, and we took swift and decisive action as the custodians of Medicare in this place. In our first term, we delivered the largest investment in Medicare since its creation and promised $8.5 billion to restore bulk-billing, expand the GP workforce and improve access to care.
Seeing a GP regularly helps to catch health issues early, before they worsen and escalate, needing more intensive and more costly care. That's why the Albanese Labor government is investing $660 million in a workforce package that will expand the largest GP training program in Australian history. We're training 2,000 new GPs a year by 2028, supporting hundreds of nursing scholarships and helping overseas trained doctors register faster, with 17,000 joining the system in the past two years alone. We've expanded bulk-billing incentives to all Australians and introduced a new incentive for practices that bulk-bill every patient. Bulk-billing is rising again in every state and territory. We're doing this because we know bulk-billing is something that Australian families rely upon; in fact, it's a critical part of our Medicare system.
Our record investment in Medicare restores every dollar the Australian Medical Association says was cut from Medicare through the funding freeze implemented by the previous coalition government. This is a policy about lifting up our nation and ensuring no-one is held back and, of course, no-one is left behind. We also promised 50 Medicare urgent care clinics, but we delivered 87, and more are on the way—another $658 million to open 50 more clinics nationwide. Five of those will be in my home state of South Australia, with an additional three announced earlier this year, including in my community of Sturt, something that our local MP, Claire Clutterham MP, was a fierce advocate for and very pleased to see announced. These clinics provide free walk-in care seven days a week, taking pressure off emergency departments and saving families time, stress and money.
Over 1.5 million patients have walked through the door of a Medicare urgent care clinic and received the free urgent care they need. I am one of those patients. I've taken both myself and my children to these clinics, instances when we otherwise would have been going to the emergency department. Our Medicare urgent care clinics have filled a much-needed gap in our healthcare system. Now patients all around the country, including parents of young children, just like me, don't have to spend hours in a hospital emergency department. We're building on our historic investment in Medicare to take pressure of hospitals and make free urgent care available to Australians in every community with the launch of 1800MEDICARE, a free nationwide 24/7 health advice line and after-hours GP telehealth service.
Of course, when it comes to women's health, an area of public policy which I have been advocating for my whole parliamentary career, we are providing Australian women with more choice and better treatments at a lower cost. When it comes to women's health, as I've said many, many times in this chamber, you simply do not need to look very far to see where women's pain and symptoms have too often been ignored. Often their pain and symptoms have been outright dismissed. We've seen this with endometriosis. We certainly see it with symptoms of menopause and perimenopause. But we see this right across the spectrum of women's health issues, and that has to change. The consequence of it is that women have been suffering in silence, and they should not have to do so in a modern Australia.
The Senate inquiries we ran in this place last year into maternal health and into menopause and perimenopause helped spark a national conversation about the level of support women were getting and where they were being let down. I am deeply proud that our government has invested in women's health so significantly—some $800 million worth of investments in women's health. This is a massive step change in the way women's health is funded, in the way women's voices are being heard and in the way we have chosen to prioritise these issues within our healthcare system, when women have been ignored and silent for far too long.
We're making contraceptives cheaper and funding more treatments for menopause. Since 1 July, new menopause and perimenopause health assessments have been available under Medicare so that women can receive the holistic care they need from their family GP when they need it. We know that, to have these conversations with your GP, you simply need more time, and that's what this investment achieves. We've also added contraceptives like Yaz, Yasmin and Slinda to the PBS, giving women more choice at a lower cost. For many of the women who use these medications, there is no alternative. The consequences of other medications are too great. We need these medicines on the PBS so that women have the choice to access the medicines that work for them and their bodies. We've also added hormone replacement therapy and IVF medications to the PBS, some of them for the first time in 20 years. For decades and decades and decades there was just simply no action to provide and fund diversity and more choices for women when it came to the PBS. That has changed now.
We're also helping Australian women suffering from endometriosis and complex gynaecological conditions to have access to longer specialist consultations—also covered under Medicare. We've opened Australia's first endometriosis and pelvic pain clinics, and we will open an additional 11 clinics to bring the total number to 33 across every state and territory. These clinics do amazing work. I've visited the Thrive Endo Clinic in South Australia. I've met with their patients time and time again, as well as their practitioners. This is life-changing care which is enabling women to not just get the health care they need but also re-enter the workforce. Endometriosis can be debilitating and so can pelvic pain. These clinics are absolutely changing lives. We need more of them and we have made that investment. It's about receiving care which is tailored to your needs as a woman, where you feel listened to, understood and well treated and your pain and symptoms are not dismissed. Women have told me that, before accessing the support from these specialist endometriosis and pelvic pain clinics, they had been dismissed and told things like, 'If you have a baby, your endo will go away.' It's nonsense, it's not true, and we need better quality care for these women.
We are also expanding the remit of these clinics to help women with symptoms of perimenopause and menopause. Again, they're not optional parts of a woman's life journey at all. Any woman fortunate enough to reach midlife will go through menopause. So that we simply haven't had appropriate care for women in this stage of life is nonsense. It is not optional for women; good-quality health care and treatment for menopause should not be optional either.
We are determined to build a stronger, fairer healthcare system—one that does not dismiss women's pain, but responds to it with compassion, expertise and the time women need with their GPs. We're strengthening Medicare with real, lasting support for women's health. I am extraordinarily proud of this work and have been extraordinarily proud to advocate for it.
We're also making medicines cheaper than ever before by cutting the maximum PBS co-payment to $25 and expanding 60-day dispensing. We know Australians have saved over $1 billion on scripts under the Albanese Labor government. This is a key cost-of-living measure. We don't want a single Australian to forgo medicine that they need because they cannot afford it, and we know this has happened. Having already slashed the cost of medicine, with the largest cut to the cost of medicines in the history of the PBS in 2023, we are going further. This represents a more than 20 per cent cut in the maximum cost of PBS medicines, which will save Australians over $200 million each year—again, delivering real cost-of-living relief for Australians. We are also investing to protect the next generation of Australians from harm, with world-leading vaping reforms and a $350 million crackdown on illegal tobacco, supporting our health and law enforcement agencies.
Finally, we are delivering an extra $1.8 billion to public hospitals next year, bringing our Commonwealth contribution to a record $33.9 billion in 2025-26, and there are further long-term reforms underway. This one-year agreement means Australians will benefit from better funded public hospitals as cooperation builds on long-term, sustainable health-system reform.
From doctors and nurses to public hospitals and urgent care, and from integrity in the system and compliance to cheaper medicines, our government is working to strengthen every part of Medicare. This is what Labor does. We created Medicare. It is part of our legacy, and only a Labor government will continue to protect and strengthen it. This is in stark contrast to the Liberals and the coalition government, who previously cut $50 billion from public hospitals and froze the Medicare rebate. We are building a system which supports Australians with the cost of their health care and which makes sure women's voices are heard—which doesn't dismiss their pain, but actually funds women's health properly and takes these issues seriously.
We are investing in Medicare, but we are also doing what we need to do to strengthen the integrity of it. It is too important for Australians not to, and I commend the Health Legislation Amendment (Improved Medicare Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2025 to the Senate.
