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

Thanks to the member for Hasluck for that question. She remembers that at the last election we promised 50 Medicare urgent care clinics. They would be open seven days a week with extended hours and would be available for walk-in urgent appointments. Well, we didn't open 50; we opened 87 clinics. Already they've seen more than 1.2 million patients, a third of them seen on weekends and a third of them under the age of 15, but every single one of them fully bulk-billed. All they needed to take was their Medicare card. They're not only getting terrific-quality urgent care where and when they need it in their own communities, free of charge; they're also taking real pressure off our hospital emergency departments.

That's why last night we funded 50 more urgent care clinics, including in Ellenbrook in the fast-growing north-eastern suburbs of Perth. Once they're open, four in five Australians will live within a 20-minute drive of an urgent care clinic. More than two million patients will be seen every single year.

The opposition leadership have opposed this from day 1. They've called it wasteful and opposed it. But, like with so many of the ideas from the Leader of the Opposition, the backbench is starting to take a different view. The young, energetic member for Casey back there loves urgent care. He has a petition calling for a Medicare urgent care clinic in the Yarra Ranges:

Imagine this: You wake up feeling unwell on a Saturday morning. It's not an emergency, but you need to see a doctor.

…   …   …

That's why we need a Medicare Urgent Care Clinic for the Yarra Ranges.

And he will be so pleased that one of the 50 from last night will be in the Yarra Ranges. He might not be so pleased that that this bloke, the Leader of the Opposition, is opposed to it. We will support it. I say this to the member for Casey: we've got your back, sunshine, even if this bloke has left you high and dry.

But I also say to the member for Casey: you shouldn't be surprised. This guy has never liked free Medicare services. He's always wanted American-style user-pays health care. That's why he tried to make everyone pay every time they went to the GP. That's why he tried to make everyone pay every time they went to a hospital emergency department. And he'll do it again because—he warned us last week—past performance is the best indicator of this guy's future action. We know he will cut the urgent care clinics and patients will end up paying, including patients in the Yarra Ranges.

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