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

The Albanese Labor government is investing billions in remote, rural and regional Australia. We don't just deliver a pork-barrel chunk of money for regional infrastructure and call it a day, like those opposite did. We are delivering all our programs, across all portfolios, to help regional Australians with their health, housing and education.

I represent a rural, remote and regional electorate in the electorate of Braddon, which spans across the north-west coast of Tasmania, down the west coast—the wild west—across to King Island.

An honourable member: It's beautiful.

It is beautiful, thank you. I was shocked when I read what this MPI is about, because I wanted to come in here and talk about some of the things that we are delivering not only for the electorate that I represent, which is rural, remote and regional, but also right across the country in.

In Burnie, we have delivered an urgent care clinic that has seen 1,800 presentations, and it opened in March; 1,800 people have been able to go through the doors of that urgent care clinic to keep them out of the Burnie hospital emergency department. The Devonport Urgent Care Clinic, open for two-and-a-bit years now, has seen over 40,500 presentations. I had to actually go back and look at that figure because I thought it was wrong. It offers free walk-in care when people need it over extended hours, seven days a week, taking pressure off both our North West Regional Hospital and the Mersey Community Hospital. It is improving accessibility to health services for regional Australians—the people that live in my region.

Our government has committed to deliver more urgent care clinics right across the country, with four out of five Australians living within a 20-minute drive of their local clinic. So don't try and stand there and tell us over on this side that we are not delivering for regional Australia, because that is one part. There are Medicare mental health centres offering free walk-in mental health care and support. We are establishing a national network of 92 Medicare mental health centres, including five in Tasmania. In the electorate of Braddon there are two, one in Burnie and one in Devonport. There's no need for an appointment and no need for a referral. Access to timely mental health care is available without delay, without a referral and without cost. The really important thing that I love about these centres is the support from support workers who have travelled their own journey with mental health issues.

We delivered tax cuts for every taxpayer, including more coming this year and next year. That will benefit all taxpayers right up and down the income scale—not just those on the big money up there but everyone, on every scale of the system. The average tax cut was $43 a week in 2026-27, and that is benefiting over 45,000 taxpayers in my electorate of Braddon alone.

On penalty rates: we've passed legislation to protect penalty and overtime rates. That benefits 2.6 million Australians who work on our public holidays, and we can thank them for that. But, also, the fact is that they now get recognition for their weekends, late nights and early mornings, and that delivers on a commitment that we put to the electorate in 2025.

And just take a look at the number of regional electorates that we represent right around this horseshoe. They put their faith in us, and we have delivered on that. We're funding road upgrades in regional programs like Roads to Recovery and the Black Spot Program. These programs support the construction and maintenance of local roads. Again, in the electorate of Braddon, between 2024 and 2029, local councils—those people that do rely on us to support them, which we do really well—will receive almost $29 million through Roads to Recovery. That's important for people who travel the roads every day to go to work and for our transport industry in coming and going from our ports. Those are really important issues.

We have cheaper medicines, bulk-billing and hospital funding. We've tripled the bulk-billing incentive, helping pensioners, concession-card holders and families with young children. In Braddon, we've got 70 per cent of GPS now fully bulk-billing. We've got 27 Medicare bulk-billing practices—10 of these switched to bulk-billing after we made the changes on 1 November. That is making quality health care accessible, along with the urgent care clinics and the cheaper PBS medicines for people who live in our regions. There is so much more, if only I had more time, but we are delivering for regional Tasmania. (Time expired)

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