Medicare rebate rises for longer gynaecological consults
Melissa Davey
The federal well being minister, Mark Butler, has introduced that for the primary time, girls can have entry to longer specialist consultations of 45 minutes or extra for gynaecological care, lined underneath Medicare.
From 1 July 2025, two new gadgets can be added to the Medicare advantages schedule, which can even enhance the rebates acquired by gynaecologists from Medicare for offering specialist gynaecological care.
The rebate can be elevated to $168.60 for at least 45 minutes, in comparison with the usual charge of $95.60. Longer subsequent consultations will appeal to a rebate of $84.35 for at least 45 minutes, in comparison with the usual charge of $48.05.
The change is a response to the variety of girls struggling endometriosis and complicated gynaecological situations like continual pelvic ache and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS).
Endometriosis could be extraordinarily painful, and it impacts a minimum of one in 9 women and girls and people assigned feminine at beginning. Signs embrace ache within the abdomen, again and hip areas which might have an effect on high quality of life, on account of tissue much like the liner of the uterus rising outdoors of it. Ladies face years of delays in receiving a analysis and have suffered as a result of customary consults are sometimes insufficient to deal with the complexity of the situation.
Butler mentioned the Medicare gadgets would assist girls to obtain well timed, acceptable assessments and have been now not left ready for vital diagnoses and coverings.
The $49.1m funding can be part of the 2024 funds, which the federal government expects will present about 430,000 extra providers to assist girls.
Butler mentioned:
Ladies are struggling unnecessarily.
They’re having their experiences dismissed, being known as hysterical and accused of drug buying. Ladies’s ache is actual and it’s time we cease telling girls to only suck it up.
The assistant well being minister, Ged Kearney, mentioned the rebates would deal with among the inequities within the well being system.
Key occasions
Eliza Spencer
Murray Watt has introduced the small print of the nationwide emergency administration (NEMA) stockpile, which is meant to supply provides at a set value to communities experiencing pure catastrophe.
The stockpile program was introduced in final 12 months’s funds, to be in place by 30 June. It entails a standing provide panel, which is able to assist native authorities join with suppliers to entry emergency assets like modular emergency lodging, flood mitigation gear and turbines.
Brendan Moon, the coordinator-general of NEMA mentioned the panel would work alongside Australian enterprise house owners to ensure a home provide of emergency provides. He mentioned:
Over time, States and Territories – in the event that they select to entry the panel – can count on to see advantages similar to aggressive pricing and potential cooperative procurements on the nationwide stage.
The stockpile was already used to assemble emergency lodging following tropical cyclone Jasper hitting the Queensland far north coast in January.
Watt mentioned:
By having this stockpile able to roll out, and for State and Territory Governments to know what’s out there and the place, we will all assist communities by responding quicker and extra successfully.
It should guarantee emergency response businesses can achieve entry to pre-evaluated and pre-negotiated items and providers by a single procurement mechanism, streamlining deployment.
Authorities welcomes immigration detention ruling
The Albanese authorities has welcomed the excessive court docket’s judgment within the case of ASF17, which discovered Indefinite immigration detention is lawful if non-citizens’ lack of cooperation has pissed off efforts to deport them.
In a press release, the immigration minister Andrew Giles mentioned:
The Authorities fought strongly to defend our place within the Excessive Court docket within the matter of ASF17 v Commonwealth of Australia.
We welcome right this moment’s unanimous resolution of the Court docket, which has discovered that people who are usually not cooperating with their very own elimination are capable of stay in immigration detention till they’re faraway from Australia.
Neighborhood security continues to be our highest precedence and we’ll proceed to take all mandatory steps to maintain Australians as protected as attainable.
(Extra on this judgment from my colleague Paul Karp right here, and the explanations behind it right here)
Reece Kershaw reappointed AFP chief
Daniel Hurst
The Australian federal police commissioner, Reece Kershaw, has been reappointed for an additional two years, the federal authorities has introduced.
The lawyer common, Mark Dreyfus, mentioned in a press release issued this morning that Kershaw would serve within the position till October 2026:
Commissioner Kershaw’s expertise and demonstrated management means the AFP is in protected arms whereas navigating the ever altering and difficult regulation enforcement panorama.
Dreyfus mentioned an AFP deputy commissioner, Ian McCartney, had additionally been reappointed for 2 years, arguing this “continuity in management gives certainty and stability for the AFP throughout a time when its position in defending Australians has by no means been extra vital”.
The lawyer common mentioned the Albanese authorities had “the upmost confidence in our police” and was “dedicated to supporting the AFP as they work day by day to guard our neighborhood”.
Natasha Might
Labor says Medicare shift on gynaecology addresses ‘historic discrimination’
The well being minister, Mark Butler, says the announcement right this moment that the Medicare rebate will enhance for ladies’s longer specialist consultations with gynaecologists is setting proper what has been a “historic discrimination.”
Butler mentioned the medical specialty devoted to remedy of girls’s illnesses, particularly of the reproductive organs, had for too lengthy been handled in a different way underneath the common healthcare scheme than each different speciality. Butler advised ABC Information that any further:
We as Medicare pays precisely the identical price to a gynaecologist to see a girl for an extended, complicated session as different specialities obtain: cardiology, gastroenterology, a spread of others.
Butler mentioned the structural inequity had “gone on for a lot too lengthy” with adversarial penalties for ladies:
Too many ladies have been both struggling in silence, or placing up with brief consults that merely don’t scratch the floor. Or in the event that they do have an extended seek the advice of, paying enormous out of pocket prices that I, for instance, wouldn’t must pay if I went to my heart specialist. It’s time to repair this frankly, historic discrimination.
Medicare rebate rises for longer gynaecological consults
Melissa Davey
The federal well being minister, Mark Butler, has introduced that for the primary time, girls can have entry to longer specialist consultations of 45 minutes or extra for gynaecological care, lined underneath Medicare.
From 1 July 2025, two new gadgets can be added to the Medicare advantages schedule, which can even enhance the rebates acquired by gynaecologists from Medicare for offering specialist gynaecological care.
The rebate can be elevated to $168.60 for at least 45 minutes, in comparison with the usual charge of $95.60. Longer subsequent consultations will appeal to a rebate of $84.35 for at least 45 minutes, in comparison with the usual charge of $48.05.
The change is a response to the variety of girls struggling endometriosis and complicated gynaecological situations like continual pelvic ache and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS).
Endometriosis could be extraordinarily painful, and it impacts a minimum of one in 9 women and girls and people assigned feminine at beginning. Signs embrace ache within the abdomen, again and hip areas which might have an effect on high quality of life, on account of tissue much like the liner of the uterus rising outdoors of it. Ladies face years of delays in receiving a analysis and have suffered as a result of customary consults are sometimes insufficient to deal with the complexity of the situation.
Butler mentioned the Medicare gadgets would assist girls to obtain well timed, acceptable assessments and have been now not left ready for vital diagnoses and coverings.
The $49.1m funding can be part of the 2024 funds, which the federal government expects will present about 430,000 extra providers to assist girls.
Butler mentioned:
Ladies are struggling unnecessarily.
They’re having their experiences dismissed, being known as hysterical and accused of drug buying. Ladies’s ache is actual and it’s time we cease telling girls to only suck it up.
The assistant well being minister, Ged Kearney, mentioned the rebates would deal with among the inequities within the well being system.
Paul Karp
The explanations behind the immigration detention ruling
We’re digging a bit into the judges’ causes within the excessive court docket case.
Within the joint judgment Chief Justice Stephen Gageler, and all judges besides Justice James Edelman, who wrote individually, mentioned:
ASF17 could possibly be eliminated to Iran if he cooperated within the strategy of acquiring the requisite journey paperwork from Iranian authorities. He has determined to not cooperate. He has the capability to alter his thoughts. He chooses not to take action.
The judges held that “persevering with detention for a non-punitive objective that’s occurring due to a voluntary resolution of the detainee can’t be characterised as penal or punitive”.
So non-cooperation means it’s attainable to deport somebody, which means their detention will not be punitive, and so they can proceed to be held in immigration detention.
It seems to be a complete win for the federal government, with nothing for asylum seeker advocates who had wished to determine a precept that real worry of persecution is an efficient motive to not cooperate.
Victoria police write to school chancellors over pro-Palestine encampments
Victoria police’s deputy commissioner has warned college chancellors within the state there’s a sturdy chance of violence occurring between pro-Palestine protests and counter-protests on the campuses.
Neil Paterson wrote to the chancellors on Thursday saying he acknowledged individuals’s proper to protest however that police have been being known as to incidents on the college each day and he wished to keep away from any escalation that replicated what unfolded within the US.
He additionally expressed concern about “the variety of protesters who are usually not college students inflaming the state of affairs”, and legal offences such a property injury occurring because the encampments develop.
Paterson requested chancellors to “rigorously think about” the dangers, and if the encampments ought to be allowed to be established or proceed to develop.
Vote with the Greens, Bandt urges Labor MPs upset at fuel coverage
Greens chief Adam Bandt has advised the “Labor backbenchers crying crocodile tears” over the longer term fuel technique to “stop your social gathering and vote with the Greens” towards it in parliament.
Bandt wrote on X:
In the event you don’t, you’re not “doing all the pieces you’ll be able to”. You’re grandstanding.
Claiming you have been blindsided by Labor’s place on coal and fuel tells me you’re both very silly or you’re mendacity. At each hurdle, Labor’s comprehensively caved to stress from fossil gasoline companies. Vote with Greens towards extra coal & fuel for a protected local weather future.
Earlier this morning, Labor MP Josh Burns mentioned on RN Breakfast he felt blindsided by the Albanese authorities’s assist for brand spanking new fuel manufacturing and that he didn’t get into politics to “be a assist mechanism for the fossil gasoline trade”. (We lined what he mentioned right here.)
He was the primary of 5 MPs – together with Jerome Laxale, Sally Sitou, Josh Wilson and Ged Kearney – to interrupt ranks and lift considerations concerning the fuel coverage.
Albanese simply advised reporters “the federal government is united on reaching internet zero by 2050”, and the technique was essential for the trail to internet zero.
Authorities wins uncooperative detainees case in excessive court docket
Paul Karp
Indefinite immigration detention is lawful if non-citizens’ lack of cooperation has pissed off efforts to deport them, the excessive court docket has held in a serious win for the Albanese authorities.
On Friday the excessive court docket delivered judgment within the case of ASF17, an Iranian asylum seeker who refused to cooperate with efforts to deport him as a result of he “fears for his life” as a result of he’s bisexual, Christian and a Faili Kurd.
The court docket unanimously held that detention is lawful if deportation could be attainable “have been the detainee to resolve to cooperate within the enterprise of administrative processes essential to facilitate their elimination”.
In March Guardian Australia revealed a leaked inner estimate that greater than 170 could possibly be freed if the commonwealth misplaced the case.
However the court docket held that the character of detention as punitive is influenced by whether or not the non-citizen is intentionally irritating or not cooperating with elimination.
Gasoline performs ‘essential position’ in shift to internet zero, PM says
Albanese has moved on to his authorities’s controversial future fuel technique, launched by assets minister Madeline King on Thursday and which has triggered quite a lot of Labor MPs to interrupt ranks.
He mentioned:
The federal government is united on reaching internet zero by 2050 … Gasoline performs an essential position in that transition to internet zero. Renewables is the place the most affordable type of new power, the place my [government] is dedicated to making sure that we get there to internet zero by 2050. We all know that fuel has a task to play in that transition due to the firming capability that it gives.
Rio Tinto simply signed the largest deal for renewables that has been signed by any firm in Australia’s historical past – up there in central Queensland. They are saying that they want the firming capability of fuel to play a task in them with the ability to transition.