While this legislation to lower the cost of Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme medicines is being debated, it has been great to hear what people in this chamber were doing in their lives 21 years ago. For me, in 2004, which was when medicines last cost $25, I was probably midway between my two stints in our wonderful parliament. My first stint was down the road in Old Parliament House in the 1980s. I had no idea that I would be doing a second stint in this new Parliament House—as those of us who worked in Old Parliament House still call this place—as the member for Macquarie 15 or 20 years later and standing here to talk about that time. That's not the sort of thing that you really imagine is going to happen.

But I think back to that time when you did pay $25 a script, at the most, at the chemist. I was in the throws of chauffeuring around two children—a 13-year-old and a 10-year-old—to after-school activities like soccer, ballet and music. At the same time, I was juggling my small business. I did that juggling thanks not to Motorola but to Blackberry. I remember it as a really hectic time, and it was a time when I know I would not have loved having the whole family sick at the same time, because it was, even then, and as families know now, a challenge when you all ended up at the doctor's.

I think that, as Special Envoy for the Arts, I should just point out a few other things about that period. I think it's incumbent on me to do that. During those trips in the car with the kids, we would have been listening to Missy Higgins's 'Scar' and Jet's 'Are You Gonna Be My Girl'. Of course, the Left Right Out band reprises that Jets song whenever we get the chance. Shrek 2 was around, and I know we would have been singing along to Smash Mouth's cover of the Monkees' 'I’m a Believer' from the soundtrack. Out of the car and on to what we might have been seeing at home, at the Oscars ceremony in 2004, Australian Adam Elliot won in the Best Animated Short Film category with HarvieKrumpet, which I know we enjoyed very much. In the publishing world, Shirley Hazzard won the Miles Franklin Award for her novel The Great Fire. The Archibald Prize was awarded to Craig Ruddy for his portrait of actor David Gulpilil. That portrait won both the Archibald Prize and the People's Choice Award, which was only the second time that exhibition visitors agreed with the judges' decision since the publicly voted award was introduced in 1988 and just the second time that an Aboriginal sitter was the subject of the Archibald-winning work. Now, this sort of paints the picture of who we were in Australia then. At the ARIAs, Jet won album of the year for Get Born, Kasey Chambers won best female artist, John Butler won best male artist, Guy Sebastian had the highest selling single with 'Angels Brought Me Here' and Delta Goodrem had the highest selling album with Innocent Eyes. Rove McManus announced the Little River Band was being inducted into the Hall of Fame. We were living in a very different time, and how amazing is it that this bill takes the price of medicines back to that era?

The bill reduces general patient co-payments from $31.60 to $25 from 1 January next year, which was our 2025 election commitment. Let's remember that this builds on the work that we did in January 2023, which saw the largest cut to the cost of medicines in the history of the PBS, with the maximum cost of a general script falling from $42.50 to $31.60. We've all got a bit nostalgic about 2004, and we have good reason to be proud that we are bringing prices down to what they were then. Relatively speaking, that means cheaper medicines for families, even compared to what it was like for our families back then. As I say, I know when patients and families have multiple prescriptions to fill at the pharmacy, particularly in winter, when stuff goes around, it's measures like these that make a real difference. I am aware that patients who are on multiple medicines have to make choices about which script to fill when times are really tough for them. These are all steps that the Albanese Labor government's taking to ease these cost-of-living pressures. It's worth noting that pensioners and concession card holders will continue to benefit from the freeze to the cost of their PBS medicines. That cost is frozen at its current level of $7.70 until 2030.

One of the other measures we've taken that sits alongside this cost cut is to introduce 60-day prescriptions for certain stable health conditions. What that means is that things like diabetes, epilepsy, asthma, breast cancer and menopause—stable conditions—may, on doctors' advice, allow the person to get a 60-day prescription, which means you can get twice as much medication on a single prescription for a single prescription price. Eligibility for the 60-day prescription has been introduced gradually in three tranches over 12 months or so, with around 300 medications now included. We started it back in September 2023, the second stage was March 2024, and the third stage was September 2024. What that tells you is that this is not a piece of legislation that's sitting in isolation.

Importantly, we've also invested in new programs and payments for pharmacies, who are the ones issuing these scripts. That includes reinvestments like expanding the National Immunisation Program to pharmacies and ensuring that a pharmacist gets the same fee as a doctor gets to administer a vaccine and increasing support for rural and regional pharmacies through new and increased payments, which will deliver around $300,000 or $400,000 in additional funds to eligible pharmacies across four years.

Earlier today, I had the opportunity to step into a model pharmacy consult room, set up here in Parliament House, to see an example of the types of services that have been increasing in our pharmacies. It was particularly focused on women's health, and I'll have a bit to say about that a little later on. Seeing that best-practice model pharmacy treatment room builds on my firsthand experience of going into my local pharmacies for a flu shot, a top-up COVID shot and my very recent whooping cough vaccination. I'd like to take the opportunity to thank pharmacists, particularly my local pharmacists across the Emu Plains, Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury area, because they are being asked for—and, from what I can see, being very pleased to offer—additional services and giving people additional reasons to come into their pharmacies. I'm certainly clear that they are part of how we improve health delivery across our communities.

The changes that we're debating today really do sit within a context not just of making medicines cheaper but of making healthcare more accessible and affordable. There's a whole range of ways in which we're doing that. One of the measures that I know is really helping locals in my community is the Penrith urgent care clinic, which is open extended hours and weekends. That is a bulk-billed service that allows people to access urgent but not life-threatening medical care. I'm very pleased that work has started by the Nepean Blue Mountains local health area and Wentworth Healthcare to identify the providers and location for the Hawkesbury urgent care clinic, which we committed to earlier this year. I'm really looking forward to seeing the level of interest there is in providing a service that is so badly needed in the Hawkesbury region. We promised 50 urgent care clinics in our last term of government. We delivered. Now there have been 90 that have opened their doors—although new ones are opening nearly every week, so I hope my figures are the latest.

What we're seeing in Penrith at the urgent care clinic are treatments for minor fractures, sprains and other kind of sport injuries; neck and back pain; respiratory illnesses; urinary tract infections; minor cuts; burns; and insect bites and stings—all those things for which you know you need to get to a doctor fast but are not necessarily things that warrant being in the emergency ward. It really fills a gap in the system and complements the work that we're doing here to reduce the cost of medicines.

The other area where we've worked hard is to make it more affordable just to see your local GP, with the two largest increases to Medicare rebates in 30 years. We increased Medicare rebates more in just two years than the former government did in nine long years, and the data tells us that this record investment is turning around bulk-billing, which has started rising in every state, delivering an extra six million free visits to GPs in just over 12 months. We know there's much more to do in this area, and certainly in Macquarie it can still be tricky to find a GP offering bulk-billing and to have a reasonable waiting time, but these early results show our commitment to strengthening Medicare is delivering. I'll continue working on the local challenges that we have, because I know how much bulk-billing matters to our community.

Earlier, I mentioned women's health, and this legislation will also have particular benefits to women accessing prescriptions. One of the things that we've done is focus very heavily on women's health. One of my commitments at the last election was to open a new endometriosis, pelvic pain and menopause clinic for the Blue Mountains-Nepean region. That is also underway. But, of course, once you've been to experts and you've got advice—that's the expertise in these endometriosis and menopause clinics that are the sort of thing that women tell me they desperately need. Adding menopause to the endometriosis clinics expands the clientele by several decades, I suspect, in terms of who will benefit from these clinics. Of course, you then need to access the medications that may be helpful to you.

We've focused a lot on supporting women. We've done the first PBS listing for new oral contraceptive pills in more than 30 years, with the listing of Yaz and Yasmin. That's saving about 50,000 women hundreds of dollars a year. In fact, when we're talking about prices at 2004 levels, there had been nothing listed since the 1990s, in terms of new contraceptives for women, until we did it. So there's more choice, lower costs and better access to long-term contraceptives, whether it's oral contraceptives, IUDs or birth control implants—because there are larger Medicare payments for that. There are also new menopausal hormone therapies, the first in over 20 years, with around 150,000 women saving hundreds of dollars a year from the listing of Prometrium, Estrogel and Estrogel Pro.

This legislation to bring in cheaper medicines is part of a whole suite of things that we are doing to recognise that it's been tough for people and that the most important thing is accessing the health care you need in a timely way when you need it, not when you can afford it. This is all about fulfilling the vision that in Australia it's your Medicare care that gets you health care and it is the PBS that provides you with the prescriptions that you need.

I'm very pleased to be supporting this legislation. I have had so many people say to me, 'If you haven't got your health, it's hard to tackle all the other challenges.' If you can get good health care to support your health, there's so much potential that people have and so much that they can do.