Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the motion moved by the member for Dunkley regarding Labor's plan to improve access to high-quality, affordable health care, specifically the establishment of 50 Medicare urgent care clinics across Australia. During the election campaign, I spoke to literally hundreds of Boothby residents, who told me it had become harder—and more expensive—under the previous government to see a doctor or access the health care they needed. I also spoke to a surprisingly large number of people who told me of their personal experience of ambulance ramping—of long delays for an ambulance. People would stop me in shopping centres to tell me about their mother's experience, their neighbour's experience, their own experience or their child's. These stories only confirmed what was obvious in South Australia under the previous state and federal Liberal governments—that ours was a health system in crisis, one with record levels of ramping and hospital overcrowding. That's why I was so keen during the campaign to ensure that federal Labor delivered better health services for the people of Boothby. It's why I'm so proud to be able to say, as we announced during the campaign, that the Albanese Labor government will be delivering a new Medicare urgent care clinic in Boothby at Bedford Park to support the Flinders Medical Centre.

The urgent care clinic at Bedford Park will complement the joint initiative between the Malinauskas state Labor government and the Albanese federal government to deliver a $400 million expansion of Flinders Medical Centre. This will equip the centre with the ability to deliver high-quality services to all of southern Adelaide and will complement the urgent care clinic being set up in Adelaide's south, at Noarlunga. Together, these will address the needs of those using Flinders Medical Centre, which are not only the residents from Boothby but also those from Kingston and many parts of Mayo, for whom Flinders Medical Centre is the nearest tertiary hospital. This redevelopment will deliver 160 more desperately needed hospital beds, an expanded intensive care unit, a redeveloped inpatient mental health unit and improved care for older South Australians, including a new 24-bed ward at the Repat Health Precinct as a hub for older people to access health care.

But, importantly, the urgent care clinic at Bedford Park, the one at Noarlunga and the three others like it to be established across South Australia will help take the pressure off the front end of our tertiary health system—our extremely stressed emergency departments. They will be a diversion for the emergency departments, ensuring that doctors and nurses in ED can focus on the true emergencies. It will also make it easier for families in Boothby to see a doctor or a nurse when they have an urgent, but not life-threatening, need for care.

Those of us in this place who have raised or helped care for young children know all too well that blurred decision line, usually in the middle of the night, when you're up with a sick child, wondering to yourself: 'Are they sick enough for the emergency department? Is there another option that would work better? I really don't want to be waiting with my child for eight hours.' I know that Australians and the people of Boothby don't want to add to the pressures on our hospital system and its emergency departments unnecessarily. That's what will make this Medicare urgent care clinic so valuable and so vital for the people in Boothby. It will provide time-critical and, crucially, bulk-billed treatments to Boothby residents who don't need a hospital emergency department. This will include injuries such as sprains, broken bones, minor burns and ear and eye problems. These clinics are a practical, real example of Labor's commitment to strengthen Medicare and take the pressure off families in Boothby.

By comparison, when we look at the record under the previous government, out-of-pocket costs to see a GP in Boothby went up by 35 per cent, and now they want to lecture us, as a new government, on cost of living. In my previous working life, I have run health services across the state. I know what the pressure is, I know how difficult it is, and I know that people make decisions based on whether they think they can actually afford to get health care. That's why I have advocated so strongly for this urgent care clinic in Boothby—because it's so important for people to have access to urgent care, without what are often prohibitive out-of-pocket costs.

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