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

My thanks to the member for Gilmore and congratulations on the delivery of her promise to open a new Medicare urgent care clinic in Nowra. It opened last Thursday and it's the 132nd urgent care clinic that has been delivered by this government. The member for Gilmore also delivered on her promise to ramp up operations at the existing Batemans Bay urgent care clinic to manage the impact of some changes to the local hospital operations in that town. That's now operating 18 hours a day, from 6 am to midnight, every single day of the year. With more than half of her general practices now bulk-billing all of their patients all of the time, the member for Gilmore genuinely is delivering a stronger Medicare to the South Coast, and I thank her for that.

But a stronger Medicare needs more doctors. For too long, it was simply the case that doctor numbers were not keeping pace with a population that is growing and is getting older. We've turned that around as well. The Minister for Education in particular has expanded medical school places, to train more young Australians in medicine. Cairns and Launceston now have end-to-end medical training, thanks to this government. We've delivered the first medical school in the Northern Territory, which is taking its first medical students, literally as we speak, this year. The education minister also approved the expansion of medical school places to nine other universities, starting this year, with more to come in 2028, as I understand it. We're also cutting red tape and fees for overseas-trained doctors who want to come to Australia and practise here in this country—and why wouldn't you?—particularly from countries where we have high confidence in their training, like New Zealand, the UK and Ireland. All of this means there's been a huge increase in the number of newly registered doctors practising in Australia—up by 50 per cent on pre-COVID levels.

But I've also been clear that I'd like to see more of these young doctors choose a career in general practice, because general practice is the backbone of strong health care, and that's why I'm especially pleased that we are seeing record numbers enrolling in general practice as a career. Last year was a record, but we broke that record this year, with 2,100 young doctors choosing to enrol in general practice. That's 500 more enrolments every year than we were seeing under the former government, and half of them are training outside of the big cities, in communities like the South Coast in New South Wales. That's delivering a stronger Medicare.

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