James Campbell: If Labor had its way every election would be about Medicare

It’s the thing even the most mediocre Labor leader can point to when trying to convince us he will be better than the Liberals, so it says a lot that Albo’s made it this election’s centrepiece.

It says a lot about how little he has to show for his two-and-a-half years in office that Albo is going to try to make this year’s election all about Medicare.

If Labor had its way of course every election would be about Medicare and nothing else.

It’s the party’s greatest post-war achievement, the thing even the most mediocre do-nothing Labor leader can point to when he wants to convince us he will be better than the Liberal alternative.

The reason for this is that even though it was created more than 40 years ago, it took the Liberal Party far more goes than it should have done to grasp how popular it is.

Indeed one of the greatest mysteries of Tony time was how a man who as Health Minister had boasted he would be the best friend Medicare ever had, could as Prime Minister be so stupid as to think he could get away with making people pay to see a doctor.

Since that idea was proposed in the 2014 budget – and quickly abandoned – a consensus has reigned and bulk-billing has joined wage-fixing courts as an immovable fixture in our national life which Liberals fiddle with at their peril.

That the conservatives finally learned their lesson in this space hasn’t stopped Labor from trying to scare people to death of course, most famously with the 2016 Medi-scare campaign that saw anonymous text messages warning of non-existent plans to privatise it.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is making Medicare the centrepiece of his election campaign. Picture: Thomas Lisson

Going into this year’s election it must seem like a miracle-of-miracles that bloke at the helm of the Liberal Party is the same man who as Health Minister was given the miserable job of selling people on the idea they’d need to pay $7 to see the quack.

Health Minister Mark Butler was out on Thursday giving us a taste of the stuff we can expect for the next few months.

Labor, he claimed, had tripled the bulk billing incentive because according to GPs bulk billing was in “free fall” and general practice was at tipping point.

“That was no accident – it was a result of 10 years of cuts and neglect, and in particular, the freezing of the Medicare rebate that was kicked off by Peter Dutton when he was the Health Minister”.

Actually Dutton didn’t kick-off the Medicare rebate freeze, he continued the Gillard government’s, but whatever.

“We’ve seen that investment,” he continued “that record investment in bulk-billing, has already caused that free fall to stop, and indeed for bulk billing rates to start to climb again in every single state and territory across the federation.”

In fact at no point during nine years the Coalition was in office were bulk-billing rates anywhere near as low as they are today.

In 2013 when Rudd left, 83 per cent of GP visits were bulk-billed, which rose to about 87 per cent by the time Morrison got the boot.

And though they had dropped from their peak during Covid, if there was a “free fall” in bulk-billing rates it was in the first 16 months Mark Butler was the Health Minister, when they fell to 76.5 per cent.

A year later and at 77.6 per cent they’re still way below where they were when Greg Hunt was sitting in Butler’s seat.

You get the point, the reality doesn’t matter here.

Premier Jacinta Allan was out and about pushing the same message on Thursday. Picture: NewsWire

Even if it had an enormous number of things it could say it had done with its time to make our lives easier, Labor was always going to try and make a big deal about health because that’s what Labor does.

But of course the things Albo has spent his time on have either, like the Voice, not come off or are years away like domestic manufacturing or Net Zero.

The two things people can point to it having – the energy subsidies and changes to the Stage 3 tax cut – just aren’t cutting it with the voters.

All of which explains why according to reports in the Nine papers earlier this week Albo will soon give a speech in which he will promise that if he is re-elected Labor will make it cheaper to see the doctor.

The details are still being worked out but the offering is likely to include more money in grants to GP clinics to manage complex patient needs and more money to doctors for bulk-billing through Medicare.

There will be a promised expansion of the number of Urgent Care Clinics which, as anyone who has used one can tell you, are unambiguously A Good Thing and if Labor loses this year, likely be remembered as almost its only concrete achievement.

It goes without of course all these things are likely to prove popular – especially the expansion of urgent care clinics.

But as the centrepiece of a re-election campaign for a Labor Government?

It’s going to need a bit more than that

James Campbell is a News Corp columnist

Originally published as James Campbell: If Labor had its way every election would be about Medicare