This piece was first published in Canberra Daily on Sunday 2 April 2023.

News that affordable healthcare provider Hobart Place General Practice will shut its doors next month was blow to the Canberra community.

Hobart Place GP has run in Civic for about 40 years – providing bulk-billed primary healthcare to Canberrans.

Dr Joo-Inn Chew, who has worked at Hobart Place for 20 years, wrote a moving piece this week about the difficult but rewarding and crucial work GPs do for our community.

In a closure notice posted to its webpage, the clinic said a combination of retirements and a decade-long freeze on Medicare rebates has rendered the practice “financially unviable”.

“We’ve found it increasingly difficult to practise the mixed billing model in general practice,” the closure notice said.

I’ve received a number of messages from my constituents who are understandably deeply concerned by this closure – and I’m acutely aware of the dire state of bulk billing and access to general practice in Canberra more broadly.

I know it’s never been harder or more expensive for Canberrans to see a doctor, and when it comes to bulk billing, my constituents cop some of the worst outcomes in the country.

Our bulk billing rate is lower than the national average of 42.7 per cent, which means that every time Canberrans need to see their doctor, they’ll be out of pocket around $50 for a 15-minute consultation or $66 for longer consultations.

With the cost of living rising across all aspects of daily life, this means many Canberrans simply can’t access the primary care they need.

The closure is the culmination of nine years of ideological cuts and neglect from the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Governments, which included a six-year-long freeze on the Medicare rebate by then Health Minister Peter Dutton, making it harder and harder for our doctors to bulk bill.

In addition to this, in 2020 the Morrison Government removed ACT and Queanbeyan doctors from the eligibility criteria for rural incentives.

That decision meant doctors were paid less when they bulk billed children and concession patients.

Naturally as a result, our bulk-billing rates plummeted further.

And while I understand that Canberra is not a rural area, it is an important healthcare hub for much of southern NSW, with many people travelling to access services in the ACT.

I recently spoke in Parliament about the state of bulk billing in the ACT and have raised it with Health Minister Mark Butler, who has spoken about the need to fix bulk billing and rebuild general practice in Australia.

That’s why the Albanese Government put strengthening Medicare and general practice at the heart of our election policy.

Labor knows that healthcare is a human right that should be universally available, not just there for those that can pay.

Minister Butler has delivered the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce report and is focused on making Medicare more accessible.

It may be too late to save Hobart Place GP, but I will continue to advocate for Canberra for better access to affordable primary health care.

This piece was first published in Canberra Daily on Sunday 2 April 2023.