Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health and Aged Care. How are Medicare urgent care clinics making it easier for Australians to see a doctor after a decade of cuts and neglect? What proposals will make it harder to see a doctor and will leave people worse off?

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

I thank the member for Lyons not just for his question but for terrific service over the last nine years in this place. He remembers that, at the last election, we promised 50 urgent care clinics across Australia, and we've delivered 87 of them. They're open seven days a week, with extended hours for walk-in patients. Already, they've seen more than 1.1 million patients—one in three of them kids under 15, one in three of them seen over the weekend, but every single one of them fully bulk billed.

The member for Lyons and the Tasmanian government, it must be said, argued strongly for a clinic to be opened in Bridgewater, north of Hobart. I was delighted to visit that clinic with the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and the terrific Rebecca White in early December, in its first couple of weeks of operation.

Already, it is making a real difference to that community. One member of that community, Hayley, said online:

Took my son here for an injury in December. He was seen by the nurse, and treated by the Dr within an hour of arriving. Certainly better than waiting in the Royal—

Hobart—

for 8 hours!!

That's the point: not just delivering high-quality urgent care in the community but also relieving pressure off local emergency departments.

While this is making a real difference, the Prime Minister and I both said that we do need to do more to keep strengthening Medicare, after a decade of cuts and neglect. We also know that all of this progress, like urgent care clinics, is under threat from the Leader of the Opposition, who has opposed all of our investments in Medicare.

On Sunday, he quite openly said that, if elected as Prime Minister, he would go about cutting services. He just would not fess up about which ones. We know that he'll go after Medicare, because that's exactly what he did when he last had the chance, as health minister, when he famously said that there were, in his opinion, 'too many free Medicare services'. That must be why they describe free urgent care clinics as wasteful spending.

We can have no doubt: under a Dutton-led government, the urgent care clinics will close and hundreds of thousands of Australians, like Hayley, her son and others, will be forced back into waiting hours upon hours in crowded emergency departments. And for what? It's not just because they've never really supported Medicare but because this man favours long lunches on the taxpayer dime over free urgent care. This man has to find $600 billion for his nuclear power stations, instead of investing in health. That is why Australians are never going to trust this man with Medicare.