Mary Doyle (Aston, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm terribly sorry. The Hon. Peter Dutton, the now current opposition leader—I think I did call him by his correct title. This is precisely why the Albanese Labor government invested in Medicare by tripling the bulk-billing incentive from 1 November last year in the largest investment in bulk-billing history. In this year's budget, the Albanese Labor government provided $2.8 billion to continue to strengthen Medicare. This is in addition to the historic $6.1 billion investment in Medicare in the 2023-24 budget.

Another fantastic investment in health care our government has achieved are the Medicare urgent care clinics. We have opened 77 clinics across Australia and that figure includes 19 of the 29 clinics announced in this year's budgets. These clinics make an enormous difference for patients and ease the pressure on busy hospital emergency departments. They operate fully bulk billed, are open seven days a week, with extended hours and accept walk-in patients—no appointment necessary.

There have been almost 860,000 visits to these clinics across Australia, and they've all been completely bulk billed. In my electorate of Aston, there have been over 2,400 visits to the one in Bayswater since it began operating as an urgent care clinic in September this year. We know the opposition have never supported these clinics, because they have never supported Medicare. The Hon. Angus Taylor has made it clear that these Medicare Urgent Care Clinics—

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