Alison Byrnes (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health and Aged Care. After a decade of cuts and neglect, how are the Albanese Labor government's Medicare urgent care clinics making it easier for Australians to see a doctor, and are there any threats that would make it harder for Australians to see a doctor?

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

I thank the member for Cunningham. She is a regular correspondent indeed about better health care in the Illawarra, and I'm sure that, like me, she read yesterday in the Illawarra Mercury a piece by Kate McIlwain entitled 'My daughter was sicker than she's ever been—but we didn't end up at Wollongong ED'. Kate's five-year-old daughter had become violently ill on a Sunday and was at serious risk of dehydration. Kate wrote:

I knew if we didn't get help soon, we'd end up at Wollongong emergency department with dozens of other people unable to get medical help … on a Sunday night.

But, after a call with Healthdirect, Kate was referred to the Medicare urgent care clinic at Corrimal. The sign at the opening of the clinic said that the wait time right then at the Wollongong ED was 5½ hours, but within 20 minutes she saw two nurses, and within another 20 minutes her daughter was seen by a doctor who prescribed medicine and put her daughter on IV fluids. Happily, her daughter got much better. Kate wrote:

But finally I feel like there are good options for getting fast, high quality medical treatment—even when your kids get sick at the most awkward times.

Kate's daughter is one of 660,000 patients who have already been seen at our urgent care clinics since last July. Like Kate's daughter, one in three of them have been kids under the age of 15—kids who need urgent attention and urgent care but don't need to go to a hospital. These clinics are operating seven days a week for extended hours and, importantly, every single patient seen in these clinics is fully bulk-billed, fully free of charge. Along with more bulk-billing generally for GP visits and cheaper medicines, these urgent care clinics are a really important part of our comprehensive plan to strengthen Medicare, to make it easier to see a doctor and help with the rising costs of health care in our country.

These measures are making a real difference to Kate's daughter and to millions of Australians, but we know it is still tough out there. We know that we need to keep doing more and we're determined to keep doing more in health. But we also know that all of this is under threat from those opposite. The shadow minister for health, of all people, has said that she doesn't support urgent care clinics. The shadow Treasurer only this week confirmed in this chamber again that they will cut the funding, they will close the clinics and they will force people like Kate and her daughter back into the emergency departments. As for the Leader of the Opposition, we just have to look at his record. As Minister for Health, he tried to cut $50 billion out of our public hospitals and impose a GP tax on every single Australian. No wonder this man was voted the worst health minister in the history of Medicare by Australia's doctors.