Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

Once fully up and running, this network will see two million patients every single year, not just delivering high-quality urgent care free of charge—all you need is your Medicare card—but, importantly, taking pressure off our busy emergency departments, something the Prime Minister talked to the premiers and chief ministers about on Friday. All of this is why Australians know what they get from the Labor Party when it comes to Medicare. But, after a decade of cuts and neglect, the alternative is still not very clear at all. Of course, the Leader of the Opposition has got a pretty infamous record on Medicare from her time as health minister. I'm not sure the member for Canning has ever mentioned the word 'Medicare' in this place, and, as for the great pretender to the throne, the member for Hume, who inexplicably remains on the front bench, a man with no apparent honour at all, plotting against his leader from the front bench, well, he described our Medicare investments as wasteful spending!

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