ABC Illawarra Radio - Bulk-Billing
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC ILLAWARRA - ABC DRIVE WITH FARLIE HAMILTON
WEDNESDAY, 11 FEBRUARY 2026
SUBJECTS: Bulk-billing; Healthcare access; GP Access; Specialist healthcare
[START]
FARLIE HAMILTON, HOST: Member for Whitlam, Carol Berry, joins me now. Good afternoon, Ms Berry, how are you?
CAROL BERRY MP: Good afternoon, how are you?
HAMILTON: Good, thanks for joining us. Look, where are we seeing these bulk billing centres pop up in our region?
BERRY: Look, right across our region, which is really fantastic news. As you mentioned, we've now got over 80 practices that are now fully bulk billing across the Illawarra, Southern Highlands and Shoalhaven. There used to be 38, so that's a really encouraging jump. Across the Whitlam electorate, we now have 25 of those fully bulk billing practices, and that's up from nine before these changes came into effect. So nationwide, now there's over 3,400 practises that are fully bulk billing. So we are really pleased with these most recent figures.
HAMILTON: Okay. How does this policy to increase number of bulk billing establishments differ from what we've sort of seen in the past?
BERRY: Sure. So previously only certain people were able to get access to fully bulk billed services, but we've expanded that entitlement to all Australians.
We've also encouraged practises to fully bulk bill so they get an extra financial incentive, if they fully bulk bill all of their patients. So that has really driven up the number of practices that are now fully bulk billing so that's really fantastic news. You mentioned the Australia-wide figure, that's over 81%. In New South Wales it's over 85% of GP practices are now fully bulk billing. So this is really fantastic news in terms of what we were trying to achieve.
HAMILTON: Okay, so what incentives are there for the centres to turn to bulk billing? I know you mentioned there's a financial incentive in place for them.
BERRY: That's right, so it's a 12.5% additional incentive if they fully bulk bill all of their patients, so what we're seeing is GP practices seeing that makes financial sense for them, so it's a win for them, but it's also a win for Australians where we're trying to reduce the cost for people to go and see a GP. We do not want the cost of seeing a doctor to be an impediment for people going visit their general practitioner.
HAMILTON: Yeah. Look, some GPs say that the incentives won't offset the cost of bulk billing every single patient and it could actually end up straining their budgets. How would you respond to that?
BERRY: Sure. Look, each practise will be really weighing up the benefits for them, which means not all GP practises will take up this opportunity, but we've been really pleased by the numbers that have taken that up, that incentive up.
So across Australia, 96% of all Australians are now living within a 20-minute drive of a bulk billing practice. So we have have really been able to drive up the number of practices that are choosing to fully bulk bill. So I think this is good news.
HAMILTON: Okay. What does the success of this policy look like in the next 12 to 18 months for people in Whitlam and in our broader region?
BERRY: So we're only three months in. And like I mentioned, across Whitlam, we've now got got 25 fully bulk billing practices and we used to have nine. So given we're only three months in, I am expecting those numbers to continue to increase. What we are aiming to do is that by 2030, we do hope that nine out of 10 GP visits will be bulk billed so we really want to continue drive those bulk billing rates up. We see real benefits in encouraging people to see their GP for that to be something which where cost is not an impediment so we will continue to invest in bulk billing. We believe in it, we think it has flow-on benefits, not only for people in terms of reducing their costs, but there's also benefits to our broader health system by having a really accessible and affordable level of general practice as part of our broader health system.
HAMILTON: I'm speaking to Member for Whitlam, Carol Berry. Now, tomorrow, the Labor government will introduce legislation to Parliament that will pave the way for public transparency on fees charged by individual specialists, including their gap fees. How will this improve things for patients who are needing to pay sort of out-of-pocket fees?
BERRY: So what we are hoping to achieve with this legislation is that we will be ensuring that specialists actually publish how much it costs to go and see them. There's currently a voluntary system in place, but we haven't seen the take up of the publishing of that data in a way that we'd like to see. So we are now going to be working to ensure that people can really have that transparency around how much it's going to cost to see a specialist so that they might make some decisions around which specialists to see based on cost.
HAMILTON: Okay, fair enough. All right, Member for Whitlam, Carol Berry, thank you so much for joining us.
BERRY: Pleasure, pleasure, thank you!
[END]
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