The main purpose of the bill is to act on the commitment made by our government to exempt contractor and employee GPs who provide bulk-billing services from paying payroll tax from July 2025 onwards. We really want to make sure that our primary care system is working and, most importantly, it is working as best as it possibly can and delivers the quality medical care that Victorians expect. They expect this kind of quality care, and they need it to be as bulk-billed as it can possibly be. I know when I have to turn up to the doctor, whether it is my husband or I or my kids, I constantly wonder how we went from it all being bulk-billed when I was growing up; I do not ever remember my mother paying and forking out as much money as we do now. The bulk-billing aspect when it comes to GPs is really important. I talked about this matter, and it was great to hear that Truganina has a great bulk-billing medical centre that offers all kinds of services, including GPs, speech pathologists, all of that kind of thing. They are in the heart of Trug and that was Reliance Care Medical Centre. I got to talk to a lot of those healthcare service providers, and they talked to me about some of the challenges they face. One of the things we talked about that they were so proud of is that they were a bulk-billing centre, and the local community absolutely love it.

I want to be very clear here in saying that our GPs are doing a fantastic job and doing their absolute best to deliver their care and play an integral role in Victoria’s healthcare system. It is why they got into the profession in the first place. They say it is a calling to deliver the best possible care to their local community. But what we know is that the biggest challenge facing their industry right now is a decade of underinvestment in Medicare and a decade of absolute neglect from the previous federal coalition government. They are the ones of course who kept the Medicare rebate frozen while costs continued to increase. If you look at how long they were in power in Canberra for, that is about eight years of frozen rebates, eight years worth of small gradual increases that may not have kept up, forcing more and more clinics and more and more doctors to stop bulk-billing. When I say, ‘I wonder what happened when I was a kid and in my early 20s and going to the GP and it all being bulk-billed,’ – what happened? What happened to this country was a decade of neglect from a federal Liberal coalition government. I remember back in 2014 when the Abbott federal government tried to introduce a flat $7 GP co-payment for everyone, no matter where you were, whether your clinic could accommodate bulk-billing or whether you could afford it or not. It beggars believes that a decade later they somehow succeeded. There is a lot that needs to be done to fix those mistakes, and I know that our federal government is working so hard at doing exactly this.

It is things like urgent care clinics that are fully bulk-billed that have been transformative for communities like ours in Melbourne’s west. It is at these places you can show up, like the Reliance Care Medical Centre in Trug, with nothing but your Medicare card, and you can get the best care that you need and deserve. This work is so important because it is taking the pressure off our hospitals; it is diverting people away from hospital emergency rooms and from flooding our hospitals because they cannot afford to see a GP or, worse still, they cannot access one. Right now we are going to do our bit by delivering $32 million to support graduate GPs, ensuring that medical students know that they can have a rewarding career working in general practice, because we know that we absolutely need more of them to follow this opportunity and follow this kind of calling that they have to look after and care for our community.

We have also invested an additional $10 million in this year’s budget into primary care, which will establish a grant scheme to be co-designed with MPs. The particular change that we are making today relates to a payroll tax decision made by the state commissioner of taxation, which actually went ahead and ruled that GP clinics may not be liable for payroll tax. The Treasurer has used his special powers, his ex gratia powers, to create a temporary exemption, something that this bill most importantly is going to go ahead and make permanent. This has aligned our settings with the rest of the country. It has ended the confusion over whether a clinic or a GP will be liable for this payroll tax. We have worked really closely with the primary care sector, including peak advocacy bodies like the state’s Australian Medical Association branch and the Australian GP Alliance. All of these bodies have had an overwhelming response in backing these changes that are before us today, which are giving them and their members clarity and, importantly, certainty over this matter. It also allows for all of us to focus on making primary care as affordable and accessible as possible for all Victorians, because a Labor government still believes to this day it is your Medicare card and not your credit card that should get you access to health care.

This bill does not just deal with payroll tax when it comes to GPs. There are a lot of other really positive changes as well. For example, the bill is going to apply payroll tax to cases of wage underpayments. I am really proud of the fact that I was part of this government when we made wage theft a criminal offence. It was a really big moment here in this place and for our government, making wage theft a criminal offence. We were the first jurisdiction in Australia to do so, and I am even more pleased that the Commonwealth has followed suit and made several sweeping reforms to industrial relations in this country. They are changes that were, yes, long, long overdue, but we have now nationally made wage theft a crime in every state and every territory in this country, and that is something that Australians should feel very proud of. It is logical that when wages are underpaid that this in turn lowers the amount of payroll tax that an employer must pay. Indeed you would think that this itself would seem like further incentive to go ahead and engage in this kind of illegal practice. As it stands the existing legislation only allows for the commissioner of state revenue to make reassessments of a tax liability for up to five years after the initial assessment. But most importantly, what this bill is going to do is expressly allow for the commissioner to make a reassessment for payroll tax after the five-year period where there has been a case of wage underpayment. What we are doing is we are making it really clear that if you break the law and you do not pay your workers what you should have and you get found out – and, yes, you will – you will not get off the hook for payroll tax.

This is not the only other change we have made which makes a really positive impact, though. We are also expanding the land tax exemption for social and affordable housing. Earlier this year the state budget introduced a land tax exemption for a particular list of social and affordable housing providers as well as providers of emergency accommodation. We absolutely want to see more social and affordable housing, which is a key cornerstone of our government’s housing statement and indeed the recent round of housing announcements made by our wonderful Premier over this past month. We also want to make it easier for social housing providers and charitable organisations to provide housing to support some of our most vulnerable, and this exemption will help achieve that purpose.

This bill makes some really small but really important impactful changes to Victoria’s tax system. It is all about making things fairer. That is what the Labor government has been trying to do and indeed has been going ahead and rolling out right across Victoria for the last decade – making impactful changes and making things fair. Whether you are a GP clinic providing primary critical care, someone who has been the victim of wage theft or a social housing provider, the changes in this bill make it easier for you, and that is exactly the reason why I wholeheartedly commend the bill to the house.