When the government announced it was going to spend $8.5bn over four years to fund an increase in bulk billing, it did not take long for journalists such as David Speers on the ABC’s Insiders to ask “what about the money here, $8.5bn, where will that come from?”
Never mind that we are talking an average of $2.15bn a year out of a budget which in four years’ time is expected to spend $826bn. It is hardly a big impost, more the question should be why, given how little it will cost, hadn’t it been done already?
