Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

I need to check my calendar for 2022, but I'm pretty sure the election was in May!

We are very proud of the policy we took to the election to deliver 50 urgent care services over the course of this year. I say to the member and to all people in the House who have an interest in making it easier and cheaper to see a doctor that there has been absolutely terrific buy-in from every single state and territory government, Liberal and Labor alike. For the last few months we've been engaged very closely with them on the locations of the services that will be in their jurisdictions, on protocols between the urgent care service and the local hospitals, on protocols between the urgent care service and local ambulance services, and I'm making sure the scope of practice that will be delivered by the urgent care service is appropriate to restrict it to those non-life-threatening emergencies.

This is a really important reform in Australia. Many members of this House will know that primary care services have been trying to get up an urgent care service model in Australia for years. The truth is that the Medicare system alone doesn't support it, which is why we took a model to the last election that would combine a mix of MBS servicing with block funding to underpin the staff that would be necessary for an 8 am to 10 pm offering, fully bulk-billed, taking walk-in patients, working closely with acute services in the region.

I'd like to think that those opposite would like to get behind a model that will make it easier to see a doctor after being responsible for 10 years of cuts and neglect to Medicare that have put Medicare in its worse shape in its 40-year history. I think the member should talk to his leader, who bears more responsibility than any single person in this country for the condition of general practice after trying to foist a GP tax on every single Australian pensioner, concession card holder and child, and, when that couldn't get through the Senate, instead freezing the Medicare rebate for six long years—a practice continued by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition when she was the Minister for Health. So I am happy to take questions about the fact that we were the only party who went to the last election promising more investment in Medicare, promising to strengthen a model we have such pride in as the creator of that great universal healthcare system, and promising 50 urgent care clinics around the country.

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