Tania Lawrence (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Labor is the party of Medicare, which will celebrate its 40th birthday in February next year. This has been proven time and time again, perhaps never so emphatically as by this government this year, with policies and budget provision to support Medicare, as Minister Butler has said, into the 21st century. We have seen significantly cheaper medicines at a time when cost of living is an issue, a tripling of the bulk-billing incentive in the May budget for those most in need, extension of public dental services, more after-hours primary care, expansion of general practice and scope, a boost for mental health services and real support for health workers.

The Medicare urgent care clinics are an excellent way to address pressures in the health system. There will be 58 of these delivered around the country during this term of government. I will focus my remarks on the clinics being rolled out in Western Australia. The areas earmarked by the health minister for Medicare urgent care clinics in WA are inner Perth, Rockingham, Joondalup, Midland, Murdoch and the regional locations of Bunbury and Broome. The Perth urgent care clinic at Morley and the Rockingham clinic are now operating, and the Joondalup clinic at Clarkson has been nominated and will be open soon. Midland lies in the centre of my electorate of Hasluck, and I'm keen to see the establishment of the Medicare urgent care clinic there. The urgent care clinics will not only enable local residents to attend for urgent care across extended hours without having to worry about the cost of treatment but also mean that pressure is taken off hospital emergency departments.

When the Joondalup urgent care clinic was announced it was welcomed by the Joondalup Health Campus, where there are about 100,000 presentations to the emergency department every year. A spokesperson for the hospital there said: 'A number of these patients are lower acuity presentations requiring urgent care rather than emergency care.' Many of us have had the experience of presenting to the ED during a busy period and having to wait for hours for treatment. The urgent care clinics will reduce the need to go to hospitals and make the jobs of the nurses, doctors and support staff at emergency departments easier too. Once established, some of the pressure will be taken off the EDs at hospitals close to each of the urgent care clinics, including the Fiona Stanley and St John of God hospitals in Murdoch, Broome Hospital, Rockingham General Hospital and Royal Perth Hospital.

I know that this will also be appreciated by the staff at the St John of God hospital at Midland, once the urgent care clinic is established there, for this hospital emergency department currently caters for over 6,000 presentations every month. It is a relatively new hospital, and it has a fabulous reputation amongst my community and the health profession. Any way that we can support the work of those doctors, nurses and associated health workers and support staff will enable them to continue to provide quality care into the future. The Midland urgent care clinic will service not only Midland but also Kalamunda, Guildford, the Swan Valley and the hills communities around Mundaring and beyond into the wheatbelt towns as well as the growing northern corridor centred around Ellenbrook. I have actually already made a representation to Minister Butler for a further urgent care clinic to be located in Ellenbrook, hopefully in the near future, as the northern corridor of Perth is one of the fastest growing populations not just in WA but across Australia.

The coalition should have matched this promise and they should now be lauding it, but instead they continue to focus on their negativity. The member for Moore is currently moaning on his website about the Joondalup clinic not yet being operational. Will he then congratulate and praise the government and its policy when it starts operation in the coming weeks? There's no point whingeing about a clinic or service that your party had no intention of providing in the first place. The government went to the election promising 50 clinics and expects to deliver 58 by the end of this year.

As Paul Keating said:

The underlying principle of Medicare was the health of any one of us should be important to all of us.

I find it interesting that there is a whole generation of adults who've grown up never knowing life without the Medicare system, and I hope they treasure and value Medicare as much as my cohort and those older who might remember a time when the cost of medical treatment could be a significant obstacle to seeking it in a timely fashion. I look forward to hosting the minister for health in Hasluck and seeing the opening of the Medicare urgent care clinic in Midland in the coming months.

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