Anne Urquhart (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am here today to talk about the matter of public importance put forward by the opposition, and I must say that when I read it I was a bit bemused about it. We've heard a lot of contributions that say we have failed to deliver, so what I want to do is go through and talk about what we actually have delivered and what we have achieved.

In the last three years, we have made it easier and cheaper to see a doctor. We tripled the bulk-billing incentive for people who needed to see a GP most often. That was helping pensioners, people with concession cards and families with children. We restored bulk-billing for 11 million Australians, and that also created an additional six million bulk-billed visits. I am a regional MP as well. I know what it's like out in regions. I'm not from the city; I know the sorts of things that my constituents talk to me about. We also delivered cheaper medicines—the biggest ever reduction in the cost of PBS medications.

Of those 87 bulk billed Medicare urgent care clinics that we opened—I think we said we'd open 50-something; we actually opened 87—one was in my electorate, in Devonport. That has taken enormous pressure not only off families with young children, older people and other people who couldn't get into a GP at the time they needed to, maybe over a weekend when their kids fell over or whatever—they have used that urgent care clinic—but also off the Mersey Community Hospital out at Latrobe. I have got another one promised in the last election for Burnie, which will take enormous pressure off the emergency department at the North West Regional Hospital in Burnie.

So these are things that we have achieved and things that we are going to do, and we've clearly outlined that what we've said we'll do we will do. That is something that we will do. It is absolutely delivering. We have opened Australia's first endometriosis and pelvic pain clinics—there are 22 of these—and we've also invested more than $790 million in women's health initiatives, things that haven't been done before.

So I am not sure why anybody on that side can sit around and say we have failed to deliver. It is just outrageous, particularly in the area of health but also because we've delivered a tax cut for every Australian taxpayer, something that those opposite voted against. They didn't want to share that load around. They wanted the people on the higher incomes to get the tax cuts, and we said that's not fair. We want a fair Australia, and we want to give it to everyone. And that's what we did.

We also delivered energy bill relief, and we will continue to do that in the future. We will deliver that. We've delivered free TAFE and strengthened Medicare. There are the cheaper medicines that I talked about. There are opportunities for apprentices to get assistance, particularly in the building area where we will deliver $10,000 to apprentices to help them through their apprenticeship and also to encourage it, We do need to build more houses, and we will do that by supporting apprentices, by giving them $10,000 to assist them through their apprenticeship and make them want to stay. We'll make it easier for them to stay in their apprenticeship.

I am really proud of some of the announcements that we made in my electorate that back in some of these issues that we've got. As I said earlier, we announced that we will deliver a new urgent care clinic in Burnie. We provided funding towards a Burnie health hub, which is going to sit in an old university building that was unused for years. It was lived in by possums. The possums have now been taken out, and that building is going to be ready to go. Pathology is already in there; one section is operating. By 1 July next year that will be a fully functional multipurpose health hub where people from Burnie can go and get all sorts of different treatments—women's health and women's legal services—for a whole range of issues. I'm really proud of that because I think it is something that our area desperately needs. We've assisted in funding a childcare service in Devonport. We know there are childcare shortages everywhere, and we have put that on the table to assist childcare services in Devonport. At Smithton, at the far end of my electorate on the far north-west coast, we have assisted again, with funding for a Smithton health hub. I am really proud of these, so nobody should come in here and say we have failed to deliver.

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