Let’s be blunt here: Labor’s stock-in-trade is lies. Oh, you say, but they’re politicians: they all lie. True enough, to a point, but Labor have taken systemic lying to a level not seen since the Clinton presidency in the US. Worse, they’ve been repeatedly rewarded for it by an increasingly shrinking core of rusted-on voters. At the same time, the legacy media, the only cabal who could give them a run for their money in institutionalised lying, have colluded and protected Labor for their edifice of lies.
Labor’s biggest, most egregious lies are built around their undeserved claim to be ‘better on healthcare’. For three elections in a row, Labor peddled outrageous lies that the coalition was planning to ‘privatise Medicare’. The “Mediscare” lie was so obvious that even the ABC called it out. That didn’t stop Labor from keeping it up, though: the political rewards were just too great.
Anthony Albanese’s Big Lie for 2025 was ‘bulk billing for all’. Even Labor’s own advisers are now admitting that it was all a crock.
Nearly a quarter of doctors’ clinics are unlikely to take up the Medicare bulk-billing incentive that helped sweep Anthony Albanese’s government into a second-term landslide, top bureaucrats warn.
As part of stark advice provided to the government, Mark Butler’s extensive Department of Health, Aged Care and Disability has questioned whether Labor’s proposed 12.5 per cent incentive split between practices and providers offered “sufficient incentive” for doctors to join the amended bulk-billing practice incentive program.
The warning was delivered alongside damning modelling that estimated nearly 25 per cent of clinics would not be drawn into the cornerstone of Labor’s campaign agenda through the current financial sweeteners being offered by the Albanese government.
Not that this should be news to anyone. Even during the election campaign, doctors were calling out Albanese’s lies.
Labor’s centrepiece Medicare policy promising most patients will be able to see a doctor for free has been described as “smoke and mirrors” by the national association of general practice management, as Anthony Albanese suggests some doctors have a vested interest in raising questions about his bulk-billing plan.
The Australian Association of Practice Management is the peak professional body that supports effective administration in thousands of GP surgeries.
Many of its members have provided feedback they will not become a fully bulk-billing practice as a result of extra incentives on the table for GPs.
The association has joined peak medical groups in casting doubt on the idea that most practices will be financially better off if they bulk bill all patients, and also questions political messaging that patients will be able to see a doctor for free.
GPs are, after all, businessmen. They know perfectly well what everyone who isn’t a socialist does: there’s not such thing as ‘free from the gubmint’.
“That will not be the reality because there’s no such thing as free. It’s a nice vision and a nice political sell, but we are in the business of being practical,” AAPM chief executive Miranda Grace said […] “to make people think that everybody’s just going to walk around with their Medicare card and just get free healthcare, I think, it’s actually really a misinformed statement.”
But ‘misinformed’ is a Labor voter’s middle name.
Mr Albanese spruiked the policy consistently through the election, flashing his own Medicare card as he declared “all you should need to see a doctor for free in Australia is your Medicare card … not your credit card”.
As part of his election pitch, the Labor leader claimed Peter Dutton was planning to “cut bulk billing off at the knees” and that a coalition government would dismantle Medicare.
Lies.
Responding to the department’s warnings over challenges that could stymie progress on bulk-billing rates, Mr Butler said, “Australian patients and families will save hundreds of dollars a year in out-of-pocket costs”.
“By 2030, nine out of 10 visits to the GP will be free,” he told the Australian.
And yet another lie.
We shouldn’t be surprised that politicians lie through their back teeth like this, but we should shake our heads that one-third of Australians were so gullible. And so prepared to reward obvious lies.
