SBS News in Easy English 21 July 2025
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West Australian
11 hours ago
- West Australian
New parliament, same old props for Anthony Albanese in ascendency
Midway through Question Time on Tuesday, Anthony Albanese received a yellow messenger envelope from which he extracted a slip of green plastic. Health Minister Mark Butler had already discreetly handed his own Medicare card to the Prime Minister minutes earlier. When Mr Albanese rose next, sure enough, he brandished the Medicare card that was never far from his hand during the election campaign. He was so wedded to the bit that, on the day he called the election, a staffer had to be dispatched to the Lodge to retrieve the green and gold card that had been forgotten on the early morning drive to visit the Governor-General. The reiteration of the familiar gesture during this first sitting of Parliament spoke to the Government's determination to focus attention on its delivery of election commitments. It wants to keep talking about what it's doing and sees the Opposition as irrelevant. The attitude shows as well in how Mr Albanese is approaching interacting with new Liberal leader Sussan Ley – or, rather, not interacting with her. He ignores her in the chamber and out of it. Even letters sent to his office go unanswered, where previously Peter Dutton's missives would at least be acknowledged. The Coalition meanwhile was determined to focus on the very topics Australians have just comprehensively shown they like Labor's approach to: health and energy. It didn't carry out any sustained test of brand new ministers Sam Rae (whose aged care portfolio has plenty that needs examining) or assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino, baffling people on both sides of politics. The toughest questions came from the crossbenchers, like Kate Chaney asking why just 5 per cent of the National Reconstruction Fund had been spent, or Helen Haines wondering what was happening for the nearly 90,000 older Australians waiting an extra four months for the home-care packages they urgently need. Ms Ley and her inner circle jettisoned their planned QT strategy on the fly the day Mr Albanese produced the Medicare card to instead hammer the Prime Minister on the cost of seeing a doctor. Despite the boosted bulk-billing incentives promised during the election not kicking in until November, they asked repeated questions about why it wasn't free now to see a doctor. Coalition frontbencher Melissa McIntosh brandished her own Medicare card along with a credit card during Monday's question time, earning her an admonishment from Speaker Milton Dick: 'The member will not use props!' Mr Albanese, too, received a light rap on the knuckles – 'I'm sure the Prime Minister will look after that card carefully and will continue with his answer' – but it didn't prevent his gleeful grandstanding. He delivered a lesson in the old adage of campaigning in poetry and governing in prose – and fine print. How many Australians today were using their credit card to see the GP? 'Too many is the answer, which is why we want 90 per cent by 2030 to just use this little card here, this piece of green and gold plastic,' Mr Albanese said. Energy Minister Chris Bowen could barely contain his enthusiasm at being given multiple opportunities to point out the Coalition's ongoing rift over net zero and climate policy. After the WA Liberals' State council used the weekend between the sitting weeks to call on the party to dump net zero, Mr Bowen linked Andrew Hastie's leadership ambitions with his enthusiastic support for the moves and hit job on local leader Basil Zempilas. 'The West Australian Liberal Party state council voted against net zero, the Leader of the Opposition in WA came out and disassociated himself from that which earned him an attack from the member for Canning,' Mr Bowen told Parliament. 'The member for Canning will undermine any leader of the opposition that he can find. He's taking a practice run in Perth for what he intends to do in Canberra, sometime in the next 12 months as we all know.' Ali France, who won Dickson from Mr Dutton, asked the first and last questions of the fortnight. 'How has the Albanese Labor Government been pursuing its agenda this fortnight? And how does this compare to other approaches in Parliament?' she inquired on Thursday. 'The Opposition have certainly been pursuing their own agenda – or, should I say, agendas, because there's more than one over there: fighting publicly over whether climate change is real and over whether they support net zero,' Mr Albanese said, continuing with a jibe about 'a split screen showing a split party'. The Prime Minister cautioned his caucus colleagues this week against hubris, telling them Labor had to maintain its humility and sense of service and purpose to keep in voters' good books. That hasn't stopped him and his trusty Leader of the House Tony Burke from rubbing their opponents' noses in the new way of doing things. This is compounded by the depth of the Government's frontbench and ranks of rising talent, in contrast to a decimated and divided Coalition. It's like a grand final team running on against an under-14s side, one longtime political observer put it. From slashing staff to slashing questions and committee leadership positions, they're taking advantage of Labor's numbers in both chambers and control of the ways of Parliament to hinder the Opposition's work in ways that will barely register with the public at large. Take the last-minute stunt on Thursday afternoon, where Labor did a switcheroo on the private members' business for Parliament's return at the end of this month, coming good on a threat to allow Nationals renegade Barnaby Joyce all the time in the world to debate his legislation to repeal net zero. Labor also backed the Greens to set up an examination of 'information integrity on climate change and energy', which might have escaped notice had the Greens not belled the cat on it being an inquiry into conservative campaign outfit Advance. The broad sense from Liberals willing to give her a chance is that Ms Ley's first parliamentary test went OK. She didn't make a splash, but she is giving voters a reason to look again at the party. The fights over net zero and soul-searching about the party's membership and women should have happened three years ago, Liberals from both sides of the party's broad church say. It might be leading to some pain now, but better now than on the eve of an election. Same goes for contributions like that of Longman MP Terry Young, who told Parliament the 'ridiculous practice' of quotas caused more problems than they solved. 'Men tend to be more drawn to vocations that involve maths and physical exertion like construction and trades, whereas women in the main tend to be drawn to careers that involve women and care and other people,' he said. The response from most Liberals asked about it was to put their head in their hands. It was a particularly stark contrast after a week of first speeches from Labor's two dozen new MPs, most of them women and many from diverse backgrounds. They told varied and often emotional stories of what had brought them to Parliament. But the one uniting strand throughout the speeches was their genuinely heartfelt thanks to Mr Albanese — far more so than is typical. Again and again the new MPs thanked him for believing in them when no one else did, for campaigning in their seat despite many writing it off, for asking them to run in the first place. 'Advice given to us when preparing our first speech was that it wouldn't be a bad career move to put in a 'thank you' to the Prime Minister,' Rowan Holzberger, who won the Queensland seat of Forde, said. 'Of course, I want to thank him for his performance during the campaign … But I really want to thank him for being like a big brother.' Once the excitement of the new dynamics of Parliament wears off and the Prime Minister falls back into old habits, there is potential for his bulging 123-member caucus to grow restless and unruly. The deep and personal loyalty to a leader on display during these speeches shows Mr Albanese will have as firm a grip on his party room as he does his Medicare card.
Herald Sun
a day ago
- Herald Sun
Bulk billing doctors and GPs in SA, rising fees and costs
Don't miss out on the headlines from SA News. Followed categories will be added to My News. South Australians are being left up to $74 out of pocket to visit their GP, contradicting claims by Anthony Albanese that people would only need a Medicare card – not a credit card – to visit the doctor. It comes as the Australian Medical Association SA says the state should follow Queensland's lead and abolish payroll tax on GPs. A check of many Adelaide GP clinics by The Advertiser revealed a Medicare card can only get you so far, with nearly all metropolitan clinics only offering limited bulk-billing services to select groups of the community, such as veterans or children. Most are charging patients an out-of-pocket expense of $49 for a standard consultation, with prices broadly tied to suburbs. North Haven and Port Adelaide offered one of the cheapest gap fees at $35, while Glenelg had one of the highest at $68. Unley and its surrounding suburbs also had high gap fees, ranging from $61 and $74. Some centres had low gap fees such as $30 but then charged patients 'admin fees' between $5 and $10, while others had card payment surcharges on top of the fees. AMA SA president Peter Subramaniam said SA's payroll tax on GPs means patients here are paying more than those interstate. 'The payroll tax on GPs was abolished with bipartisan support in Queensland last year, because both major parties recognised it was costing patients more and costing the system more,' Associate Professor Subramaniam said. 'This isn't just a tax on doctors – it's a tax on access to healthcare. When patients can't afford to see their GP, they get sicker,' he said. 'That puts pressure on overcrowded emergency departments, adding to the stress and costs on the system.' According to the AMA, the cost of seeing a GP in South Australia has increased by roughly $10 per visit as a direct result of the payroll tax – a cost Queenslanders are now not paying. Prof Subramaniam's comments come as new figures show Australians paid more than $151m in June to visit their GP, highlighting the mountain the Prime Minister has to climb to fulfil his pledge. Following a week in which Mr Albanese stood in parliament and repeated his election campaign shtick of waving around his Medicare card, new data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare showed Australians have also paid more than $2.2bn out-of-pocket to see a doctor in the past year. Labor's election pledge to ramp up bulk-billing with an $8.5bn investment, which it says will enable an extra 18 million bulk-billed visits a year, is yet to start, with figures showing Australians continue to take a hit to the hip pocket. 'Anthony Albanese promised Australians that 'All you need is your Medicare card, not a credit card' and that it would be 'free to see a GP',' Opposition health spokeswoman Anne Ruston said. 'While he was waving around his Medicare card and misleading the public, Australians were forking out billions of dollars in out-of-pocket costs – presumably charged to their credit cards.' Health Minister Mark Butler said increased bulk-billing would begin in November. 'We know too many Australians are paying too much out of pocket when they go to the doctor because of the Liberals' cuts to Medicare,' he said. 'On November 1, we will expand bulk-billing incentives to all Australians and create an incentive payment for practices that bulk-bill every patient.' Mr Butler said the move would result in nine out of 10 GP visits being bulk-billed by 2030. Originally published as Rising GP fees leave SA patients out of pocket despite Anthony Albanese's Medicare claims Read related topics: Anthony Albanese
ABC News
a day ago
- ABC News
Perth anaesthetist describes her harrowing experience in a Gaza hospital
Perth anaesthetist Emma Giles recently returned from Gaza, where she spent a month work with local staff. Dr Giles told Jo Trilling on ABC Radio Perth that the medical staff in Gaza are "absolutely exhausted and burnt out". Dr Giles worked at the al-Quds Hospital during her recent deployment in Gaza — which had reopened a few months prior to her arrival after being damaged "quite significantly in air strikes and tank fires". "[Medical staff] have been working nonstop for months and months now, even though this hospital's only just reopened," Dr Giles said. "They never know if they're going to wake up in the morning or if their family are going to be alive when they get back from work." When she got there she says she found the hospital's operating theatre had been completed destroyed with the cardiac catheterisation lab made into a makeshift operating theatre. "It was was quite a jarring mix," Dr Giles said. "So some of it was exactly what I'd have in Perth, but then you'd have stuff that I would have been struggling with in the 90s." Hunger grows "We [medical staff] sew a lot of people, particularly children, quite malnourished, poor healing, and they would come back every two to three days to have further wash out of their really, really nasty wounds to try and prevent infection," Dr Giles said. Ms Giles said medical staff often feel faint while working from lack of food yet they remain "desperate to keep going". "It's heartbreaking," Ms Giles said. 'Survival of the fittest' The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), is US and Israel backed operation that has taken over distribution of food from the UN and other aid agencies that had been working in the strip. Dr Giles said that she saw many patients who were injured seeking food from GHF distribution points. "The patients would come in with either gunshot wounds, explosion wounds, or because they had been trying to get at the vehicles, they'd been run over," Dr Giles said. "When you're operating on people, you often saw that the patients had this white ingrained flour in their hands. "So, the people who had actually managed to get food had then been wounded.
