Anthony Albanese’s $8.5 billion Medicare funding package announced on Sunday will strike a chord with thousands of Australians, including many in marginal outer suburban seats who struggle to afford the cost of seeing a doctor.

The pledge to make 90 per cent of GP visits free by the end of the decade will be an expensive but potentially vote-winning move. It also allows Labor to stoke the narrative that the Coalition led by Peter Dutton, a former health minister in the Abbott government, will take the knife to Australia’s universal healthcare system.