Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

A lot has changed since the arrival of Lucy Osburn to Sydney Hospital in 1869. She was sent over by Florence Nightingale to improve patient care, train nurses and clean up the crumbling vermin-ridden building. This forever changed standards of health care in this country. To be frank, standards of health care in this country need to be forever changing, constantly improving.

The next big leap in this country came in 1975 under the Whitlam Labor government when Medibank was birthed. This too was later refined and reformed, to Medicare, by the Hawke Labor government in 1984. Labor is the party that built Medicare, our universal healthcare system that proves that you should not have to face financial ruin to receive proper health care in a modern economy like ours. I believe we can and should do more to protect universal access to health care, and constant refining and improving of the system is the only way to do that.

The Albanese Labor government has made incredible progress in getting Medicare back on track after almost a decade of neglect from those opposite. Now, after only 2½ years of government, the international renowned Commonwealth Fund has ranked Australia as having the highest performing health system in the world, taking into account access, process, administrative efficiency, equity and, all important, health outcomes. We want this to continue. To secure the future of our health care, we're investing in ways that ensure Australia remains a destination for emerging clinical trials, giving Australians early access to life-changing medicine. We are constantly reforming and constantly improving.

We also have invested $1 billion into the Medical Research Future Fund, which ensures that Australia continues delivering transformative and sustainable health care that innovates and includes things like new diagnostics. I was delighted to visit ZiP Diagnostics, in Melbourne, just last week and see firsthand the leaps being made in point-of-care diagnostic platforms—and not just for humans but also for animals and our environment. A big congratulations to ZiP Diagnostics.

Our government has invested $3.4 billion to list new medicines on the PBS and placed a one-year freeze on the maximum copayment for PBS prescriptions for everyone with a Medicare card and a five-year freeze for pensioners and other concession cardholders. We want to make medicines cheaper for pensioners. That's the bottom line. Last year we tripled the Medicare bulk-billing incentive, and we've seen a 2.1 per cent rise in bulk-billing. I want to thank the doctors that are bulk-billing people who really need it. We extended access to public dental services to those on low incomes, and we broke new ground by providing Australians with 60-day prescriptions, ensuring that they can access double the amount of medications they need on a single prescription.

We can't forget the 87 Medicare urgent care clinics that ease the pressure on hospital waiting rooms around the country. I was in a hospital waiting room with my daughter, who had just fallen off a horse. She was on a spinal board. The manager of that emergency department came out and said, 'Unless you're having a diabetic low, unless you suspect you've had a stroke or heart attack, you need to go home, because there'll be no-one to see you for 12 hours.' That happened to me at the John Hunter Hospital. I witnessed it with my own ears and eyes. And I know people in my electorate are waiting longer than they should at Maitland Hospital. Don't get me wrong: it's a brand-new hospital and a terrific facility, but waiting times have blown out. In 2014, the emergency waiting time at Maitland Hospital was two hours and 50 minutes. Over the last 10 years, that amount of time has ballooned to five hours and 34 minutes, with almost one in four patients leaving without receiving treatment. That's a quarter of people who just can't wait. They go home. They're not seen. It is completely unacceptable. Many times, I've heard of parents who have issues with children taking them along to the emergency department only to take them home again and try and get into a doctor the next day.

Our emergency departments should be reserved for true emergencies, and that's where urgent care clinics come in. I want to also say thank you to our GPs, who do provide excellent general practice to my community. I know they're under pressure. My community needs its own urgent care clinic. We need that treatment that lies in between going to the GP and going to the emergency room, and that's where urgent care clinics have provided a phenomenal service to communities. I know the Cessnock Medicare Urgent Care Clinic has been terrific. In fact, I had a staff member who had to take a grandchild along. That child was unwell, and they were triaged, sent to Maitland Hospital and given phenomenal care there, which is great. But my people in Paterson also need an urgent care clinic. They provide much-needed middle ground between general practice and the emergency department. I am calling on my government to invest in a bulk-billed Medicare urgent care clinic to take the pressure off Maitland Hospital. We just have to have it.

Our part of the world is a magnificent part of the world, and we have had the fastest growth year on year for 15 years outside of Western Sydney in New South Wales. People quite frankly have flocked to the Hunter, particularly to my part of the world in Maitland. Every single day, a family is moving to Maitland. That is putting incredible pressure on our healthcare system. Our doctors do an amazing job. Our nurses do a phenomenal job, but they can only do so much with the resourcing that they have. That's why we do need an urgent care clinic. Actually, to be frank with you, I think we need two urgent care clinics in Paterson, but we're not going to be greedy; we'll be happy with just one. But we've got to get that one. I really think it should be servicing and taking pressure off that Maitland Hospital, which is a new hospital and a fantastic facility. I want to also send a big shout out to the after-hours GP clinic, which my colleagues and I from the Hunter managed to save. We secured the funding to keep that going. They do an amazing job as well, seeing people after hours at the GP clinic at the Maitland Hospital. Thank you for the work that you provide in doing that. We know you're under enormous amounts of pressure. We know that you need more assistance, and we've got to provide that for you.

It was great last night to have Dr Chris Boyle here in parliament with me to receive a nomination for the Stronger Medicare Award. Chris has provided GP services and has been a beautiful doctor in our area for over 40 years. He has told me that, when he graduated from medical school in the seventies—let's just leave it at that round figure, shall we, Chris!—50 per cent of graduating medicos went to 'GP land', as he affectionately calls it. These days, it's down to about 10 per cent. We know that's an issue as well. We know that we have to encourage more young, brilliant medical minds to want to become general practitioners. There are various suggestions about how we do it. We need to do it. As I referred to earlier, health care in Australia has to be ever improving and ever refined. We have to embrace all of the modern medical technologies and techniques, but we also have to take our brilliant, young medical minds with us. We have to encourage them. We know that more and more pressure is being put on GPs, and that's why I am calling for a Medicare urgent care clinic in my seat. It does need to happen, and we do need to be taking some of that pressure off our doctors and our very hardworking nurses at places like the Maitland Hospital.

In my final moments, I also want to send out a big thank you to Heal Specialist Urgent Care. It's a private clinic being run by emergency physicians opposite the new hospital. They too are doing a good job, and I was delighted to take the health minister, Mark Butler, there. I think there are some ideas in my electorate particularly for how we can improve healthcare services, and I look forward to continuing to do that with our government and with Minister Mark Butler so that we can ensure the people of Paterson receive not only the most state-of-the-art health care but the health care that they need and quite frankly deserve.

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