Radio interview with Minister Butler and Will Goodings, 5AA – 26 March 2025

WILL GOODINGS, CO-HOST: Continuing our federal budget coverage and analysis this morning, we're joined by the federal Health Minister, Mark Butler. Minister, good morning to you.
 
MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE, MARK BUTLER: Good morning. Will, I didn't take you for a panda hater, I have to say.
 
GOODINGS: I can’t stand them. No, you know what? I'm not a hater. I just believe, you know, equity for humankind, Health Minister, that's all. You know, the hard-working people of Australia.
 
BUTLER: Non-charismatic fauna as well?
 
GOODINGS: That's exactly right. Plenty of other animals out there trying their best.
 
DAVID PENBERTHY, CO-HOST: Mark Butler, we love a laugh on this show, but can I just ask in all seriousness, did the Albanese Government and Jim Chalmers in particular decide that in these difficult economic times, Australia needed a bit of a laugh? Because the overwhelming tone of the response from our listeners today to the $5 a week tax cut is hilarity.
 
BUTLER: We've been pretty clear and honest that this is a modest tax cut. It's going to cost the budget $17 billion. It's a significant investment, but we want it to be seen as part of the package we took to the community last year when we redesigned the tax cuts to ensure that everyone got one, not just people on more sort of, I guess, higher incomes. As a package, the tax cut we delivered to all Australians last year and the additional ones that we announced last night deliver an average cut over the course of about $2,500 a year, about 50 bucks a week. Look, it's not huge. We're not pretending it's huge. But in the circumstances we have, we think it's the right thing to do.
 
PENBERTHY: But it's not going to make any difference at all to people's quality of life. I mean, we've had AEMO say that we're going to have power bills going up by 9 per cent in a few months time. Like, you know, you talk about the $17 billion cost of it, wouldn't it have been better to just say, look, we'll just not go ahead with it and set the money aside to build a new women's and children's hospital or something like that?
 
BUTLER: We've been able to balance a whole range of things, including additional hospital funding. South Australia next year gets an increase in hospital funding from the Commonwealth of about 15 per cent, which is more than any other state in the Commonwealth, because, frankly, it's been underfunded for too long. We're fixing that, which will help Chris Picton and the Premier continue their work in making hospital care better in South Australia. But all of these things are about choices. And  we took the view that a modest top up to the tax cuts we delivered last year was warranted given the pressure that households were under. But also, we've delivered energy bill relief, additional energy bill relief to all households as well, which we've also done over the last couple of years. We'll do that again over the course of the rest of this year.
 
GOODINGS: We spoke as part of our federal budget wrap Minister with the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners who raised some concerns with regard to some of the way in which that money is being invested in the health, in the health sector, which they say they welcome. But warn that in their view, it's not targeted enough to get the sort of level of bulk billing rate that you or the federal opposition would expect. What they would rather see is something like a 25 per cent increase to patient rebates for mental health, which they say is taking up a huge amount of time, and a 40 per cent increase in to rebates for longer consults. Have you looked at that and why did you reject their plan that they put forward?
 
BUTLER: I did, and I talked to the College and also to the AMA and other groups, including patient groups, about the situation we confront in general practice which is one where the investment we've made in bulk billing for pensioners has worked. Bulk billing rates are now for pensioners and concession card holders is now comfortably above 90 per cent across the country again. But it's continuing to slide for everyone else, everyone else is exposed to growing gap fees. I said pretty frankly, to the College of GPs look, you're asking for me to give you more money without any strings attached and I'm just not willing to do that in good conscience, particularly as a Labor Minister for Health, given we've always attached such importance to bulk billing. We will invest a record amount in Medicare, but I expect better bulk billing rates from it. I'm not just going to hand over money without strings attached. We expect bulk billing to increase. Now, I'm confident this record investment in bulk billing will see the sorts of results that we've modelled will come about. We'll start to turn around bulk billing for middle Australia, people who aren't able to get a concession card, and deliver millions and millions of additional free visits to the doctor.
 
GOODINGS: There's been an expectation that on April 2nd, when Donald Trump announces the next round of tariffs, that pharmaceuticals may well be something that the US targets. Any concern about, and I don't think anyone in Australia is going to think it's a bad move, is spending a $2 billion extra on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme but was there any discussion internally about whether you might be poking the bear ahead of what could be a targeting of Australia because of that scheme?
 
BUTLER: Look, Big Pharma in the US for many, many years has hated the PBS, has hated our Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. It's a scheme that puts a lot of pressure on companies to deliver medicines at an affordable price. It's one of the oldest health schemes in the world and it's delivered enormous benefits to Australian patients. Even under John Howard, when he was negotiating the US Free Trade Agreement, Big Pharma from the US tried to pressure the Australian government to change the PBS and to give a better deal for big pharmaceutical companies who obviously want to sell their medicines at higher prices. Our priority is delivering cheaper medicines for Australian patients. We've made it clear again, because Big Pharma is doing exactly the same thing right now. We've made it really clear that there is absolutely no way the Australian government will negotiate around our PBS. If the US Administration puts tariffs on Australian exports to the US and they're mainly sort of blood products from CSL, well that's just going to hurt American patients. It's obviously going to have an impact on CSL as well. But we're not willing to negotiate around the PBS. We've made that absolutely crystal clear.
 
PENBERTHY: Minister, we've only got one marginal seat these days in South Australia, which is Boothby. We've got fewer seats here than we did when you first went into politics, 20 years ago. Does that explain why we get $125 million to fix Curtis Road and Queensland get $7.2 billion to fix all sorts of stuff in key marginal seats up and down its entire length?
 
BUTLER: First of all, we regard Sturt very much as a marginal target seat. We're campaigning very hard there with a terrific candidate. It's not just Boothby. But the article in The Advertiser is just wrong.
 
PENBERTHY: How’s it wrong?
 
BUTLER: I'll tell you why because over the next four years of the infrastructure investment budget, South Australia gets more than 11 per cent. Now we're 7 per cent of the population. We're getting 11 per cent of the infrastructure funding over the four years of the budget.
 
PENBERTHY: It's not wrong in terms of the new specific announcements that were outlined last night. Is it?
 
BUTLER: It is because there are other additional new budget commitments from last night. There's $525 million for the high productivity vehicle network, which is about how big trucks come through the city. Another $525 million, I'm not sure why The Tiser missed that. There's $40 million for the main South Road upgrade around Myponga to Yankalilla to make that road safer. But there is huge money rolling out right now around the Darlington to Torrens part of the north south upgrade. I can tell you here in Canberra the complaint about the South Australian infrastructure budget is that South Australia gets substantially more than its population share. Other states notice that. It's part of the very good management of South Australia has always had, going back to Pat Conlon and Rod Hawke[EP1] [EP2] , they've always managed their infrastructure budget well, which has mean they've always done well out of the Commonwealth and they do very well again -11 per cent of our infrastructure budget going to a state with 7 per cent of the population. The best hospital funding deal in the country and the best infrastructure deal as well.
 
PENBERTHY: Just finally, Mark Butler, do you want to steal Albo’s thunder? Because we're hearing rumours that he's going to go to Government House on Friday?
 
BUTLER: I can't count the number of rumours going around this building. I tell you mate. There's every permutation. He's going this morning, he's going Friday, he's going Sunday. He's going to wait for a couple of weeks to do Peter Dutton slowly. At the end of the day, we don't have long to wait. There's going to be an election in May and it's going to be a very important election, particularly around the future of Medicare.
 
PENBERTHY: Mark Butler, the Federal Health Minister and the Member for Hindmarsh, formally Port Adelaide. Thanks for joining us this morning on 5AA.
 
BUTLER: My pleasure.