Federal election 2025: Mark Butler, Anne Ruston Medicare debate lights up National Press Club

The Coalition has branded Anthony Albanese a “political vulture” preying on “hardworking, elderly, sick and vulnerable Australians” in a tense election debate on the country’s healthcare future.

Opposition spokeswoman Anne Ruston, fronting up against Health Minister Mark Butler at the National Press Club on Wednesday, delivered the sharp attack as she defended the Coalition’s approach to Medicare and promised an elected Dutton government would not implement any cuts to the universal healthcare scheme.

“Australians, rightly, are proud of Medicare, which is why it has been so disappointing to see the prime minister, the leader of this country, behaving like a political vulture, preying on hardworking, elderly, sick and vulnerable Australians using this as a campaign to fuel his Mediscare campaign,” she said.

“Prime Minister, Medicare is not a play thing of yours. It is belongs to the Australian people.

“And while the PM is out there waving his Medicare card around and trying to lie his way back to The Lodge, Australians are living with the reality that our health system is under real pressure at the moment.”

Senator Ruston also said the Coalition would not implement any cuts to the hospital network and medicines would be cheaper under a Dutton government.

“We will keep open all urgent care clinics,” she said.

“We rule out any costs to hospital funding and the Coalition will never move to a US-style health care system. These are just Labor lies.

“What the Coalition will be doing, though, is we’ll increase investment into Medicare as we always have and always will.

“We’ll prioritise workforce because we understand no policy can be achieved without the workforce to deliver it.”

Mr Butler claimed Mr Dutton would cut Medicare if he won the May 3 election, referencing the opposition leader’s time as health minister in the run to the 2014 budget.

“Peter Dutton outlined his plan for a so-called sustainable Medicare, $50bn ripped out of public hospitals, a tax on every visit to the GP for every man, woman, pensioner and child,” Mr Butler said.

“And when Labor blocked that vandalism in the Senate, Peter Dutton responded by freezing the Medicare rebates for six long years, ripping billions of dollars out of general practice.

“Those nine years of nasty cuts and calculated neglect have precipitated the crisis that confronts us today.

“Only months before that speech to the Press Club, of course, Peter Dutton had looked Australians in the eye and promised that there would be no cuts to health.”

Medicare funding forms a core part of Labor’s pitch for a second term in government and Mr Albanese has pledged to invest $8.5bn in the program to deliver an estimated 18 million additional GP visits each year alongside a lift in nursing scholarships and training for doctors.

The core of the investment will expand bulk billing incentives for all Australians and create new incentive payments for practices that bulk bill all of their patients.

The Coalition has pledged to allocate an additional $9bn into Medicare.

In the question and answer session that followed, the debate shifted to whether Mr Dutton’s proposal to cut 41,000 public servants would impact the Health Department.

Senator Ruston said “no frontline services will be even considered as part of this”.

“We have a crisis in workforce,” she said.

“It’s the biggest crisis, I think, that is facing health care at the moment, because without the workforce to be able to deliver the outcomes in health care, we cannot possibly deliver them.

“So what we want to see is – we want to see an efficient investment in frontline services, so we’ve got the doctors trained, we’ve got the nurses, we’ve got the allied health workers, the carers, people working in the NDIS and disability.

“We need to make sure that we are focused on delivering services to Australians – not public servants sitting behind desks in Canberra, but actually making sure that we are delivering our healthcare system in Australia for the benefit of everyday Australians that need that care and support, which right now, quite frankly, they’re not getting.”

Mr Butler shot back and argued public servant cutbacks would hit the delivery of health care.

“The Coalition has said that national security and frontline services are exempt from the 41,000 job reductions or job cuts,” he said.

“That leaves on the analysis of the Public Service Commission, a little over 60,000 jobs in the frame for 41,000 jobs going.

“That includes all of the Department of Health. This is going to be devastating to our capacity to implement health programs.”

Mr Butler then claimed the Coalition would cut a planned Australian Centre for Disease Control, a new agency that would co-ordinate the country’s pandemic responses in the wake of Covid.

Senator Ruston said that claim was a “lie”.

“All I would say to you, minister, is that you made a promise to the Australian public about the formation of a CDC,” she said.

“So far, you have failed to make the case for what that CDC might look like,” Senator Ruston said.

“I have not seen any legislation about the establishment of the CDC and I find it quite interesting that you’re suggesting that we import, by the sound of things, the American-style CDC into Australia, when by all accounts, Australia’s response to the Covid pandemic was one of the best in the world.”

Mr Butler said the government’s investment in Medicare would lift bulk billing rates to 90 per cent of all Australians.

“There will be Australians, and we’ve been very clear about this, there will be Australians who will continue to be charged a gap fee,” he said.

“But we think that we can get to 90 per cent for all Australians under these arrangements.”

Senator Ruston said bulk billing rates had reached 88 per cent under the previous Coalition government.