Tony Zappia (Makin, 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 Medicare urgent care clinics making it easier for Australians to see a doctor and taking pressure off hospital emergency departments?

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

Thank you to my friend, the member for Makin, for that question. A big part of our promise to strengthen Medicare, from Labor, was to introduce a network of urgent care clinics. They would be open seven days a week, extended hours and available for walk-in appointments. We promised to open 50 last year, and we opened 58. We'll open another 29 this year as a result of the Strengthening Medicare agreement the Prime Minister struck with premiers last December. This week we will pass 800,000 patients being seen since the clinics started to open last June—a third of them are kids under 15, a third of them are patients seen on the weekend. Every single patient, importantly for Labor, has been fully bulk-billed.

Last week I was delighted to join the member for Makin to open clinic No. 76, the Para Hills Medicare Urgent Care Clinic. Now more patients in his community will be able to get the urgent care that they need when and where they need it—taking real pressure off those local hospitals, Modbury and Lyell McEwin, and their emergency departments in particular. The local clinical director, Dr Monkhouse, who joined the member for Makin and me, said this to the press:

I'd just like to thank the … current federal government, for actually breaking the mould and doing something. There is a massive problem with patient visits to emergency rooms … and somebody has that last put their hand up, stepped up to the plate and done something about it.

I thank Dr Monkhouse for that.

Once the network of 89 clinics is fully up and running, they'll see as many as 1½ million patients every single year, most of whom would otherwise have turned up at the local emergency department. Already, with only some of those clinics open, we know that presentations for non-urgent conditions at the emergency departments at the three big states on the eastern coast are either flat or actually trending down, confirming that these clinics aren't just good for patients and parents; they're also good for our hospitals.

Along with rising rates of bulk-billing and cheaper medicines, these clinics are making a real difference to millions of Australians, but we know it's still tough, and we know we have to do more. We also know that all of this progress is under threat from those opposite. The shadow Treasurer in particular could not have been clearer that Labor's investment to strengthen Medicare is all on the chopping block under a Dutton government. We know this. He could not have said it more clearly. The funding will be cut. The clinics will close. The patients will be forced back into the emergency department. If you think it can't be true, Mr Speaker, just look at what the Leader of the Opposition did last time he got his hands on Medicare.