Renee Coffey (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is for the Minister for Health and Ageing. How are Medicare urgent care clinics making it easier for Australians to see a doctor when they need to and where they need to?

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

To the new member for Griffith: congratulations on your election and on an absolutely terrific first speech last night. And thank you for the energy with which you sold our government's plan to strengthen Medicare—for more doctors, nurses, bulk-billing, urgent care clinics and for even cheaper medicines. Your background—as a leader of the mental health organisation, the Kookaburra Kids Foundation—made you absolutely the right person, along with Senator Wong, to announce our government's commitment to expanding the Gidget Foundation centre's support for perinatal mental health, as well.

I was especially delighted, in early March, to join the now member for Griffith at the Medicare urgent care clinic in Woolloongabba, the South Brisbane Medicare urgent care clinic—that's one of 87 clinics we established last term. We promised 50; we delivered 87. They're all open seven days a week with extended hours and fully bulk billed. More than 1.7 million Australians have already gone through one of those 87 clinics, including 23,000 in south Brisbane. Around a third of those patients are kids under the age of 15, like Natassja's four-year-old daughter, who went to the south Brisbane urgent care clinic after an accident at kindergarten. In her Google review, Natassja said that Anna, the receptionist, was terrific, that Kirsty, the nurse was 'the most generous and patient nurse I have ever encountered'. She gave a bit of a wrap for Dr John as well. Natassja's review went on to read:

We were there for less than an hour, and left with all the information we need and a little lady who was all bandaged up. This clinic bulk bills and validates parking—

I think that's the first clinic I've heard of doing that, as well. It never stops getting better—

It is a testament to public health. I am so grateful for the experience we had.

At the last election, we promised 50 more of these urgent care clinics, including one in Greenslopes, the other end of the member's electorate. Expressions of interest have already opened for some of those clinics. We've committed to all 50 being open in this financial year, but I'm doing everything I can to get as many open as I can before Christmas. As the Minister for Education and the Prime Minister have said, we are so focused on delivery. We are so focused on repaying the trust shown to us by the Australian people, including around our plan to keep strengthening Medicare. Our expanded urgent care clinic will mean that 80 per cent of the Australian population will live within a 20-minute drive of an urgent care clinic. They will be looking after two million patients each and every year, every single one of whom will be bulk billed. It is absolutely a core part of our plan to strengthen Medicare.