Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was terrific to be back in Tasmania late last week, in southern Tassie, with my colleague the member for Lyons, Brian Mitchell, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Medicare. It was terrific to be able to do that at one of the urgent care clinics. Deputy Speaker Archer, I know that you would know the urgent care clinics in Tasmania extraordinarily well. There are two in Hobart, one in Launceston and one on the north-west coast. They have had over 14,000 visits to those urgent care clinics. These are Tasmanians that we know would have ended up in our emergency departments if it were not for the urgent care clinics.

Indeed, we know that in Tassie around 40 per cent of presentations to our emergency departments are not necessarily the best place for them to be, and they could be seeing either a nurse practitioner or a general practitioner if they were available. One in four of the visits to the urgent care clinics in Tasmania occurs on a weekend, which obviously explains why many of them end up in an emergency department—because in the past they haven't had any other option.

One of the things we were able to talk about at the 40th anniversary of Medicare at the urgent care clinic was how our GP bulk-billing incentive is actually going. We have invested over $3 billion in increasing the GP bulk-billing incentive, and in Tasmania it has had an extraordinary impact. We know that in Tasmania getting access to bulk-billing GPs has been an issue for many years. My electorate has been one of the worst in the country for it. I'm pleased to say that, since that increase in just two months, we've now had a 7.5 per cent increase in bulk billing in my electorate of Franklin. In the neighbouring electorate of Clark in south Tasmania where the two urgent care clinics are located, which I don't think is coincidental, there's been a nine per cent increase in bulk billing in just two months. Clearly the urgent care clinics together with the tripling of the bulk-billing incentive—that $3 billion and indeed the $6 billion that we're investing in Medicare—are really having an impact in my home state of Tasmania.

We're also able to talk about the trial of the single-employer model that we are trialling with the Tasmania state Liberal government, where we are investing around $12 million in the state government actually being the single employer of GPs so that they're able to practise while they do their practical. This has been a resounding success. We had a trial of five last year. There are 12 GPs this year. We've funded up to 42 GPs to be employed under the single-employer model. This trial is something that we should be able to expand, particularly working with two tiers of government. Our state government knows that a lot of people are ending up at emergency departments who don't need to be there. If we can get them alternative care through nurse practitioners, through GPs or through alternative models of care, we should absolutely be investing and looking at those. That's what our urgent care clinics and our bulk-billing incentive are doing in Tasmania.