Gordon Reid (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today, I rise to speak about a reform that, while practical in design, is profound in impact, and that is the new Medicare urgent care clinic at Erina. Behind every policy and behind every service, there is a moment—a mother holding a febrile child unsure of where to turn, an older Australian in pain from a rapidly progressing infection or a worker with a laceration, bleeding, anxious and needing care now. These are not abstract scenarios; they are real clinical presentations happening every single day right across the Central Coast. For too long, the only door open in those moments was the emergency department.

Let me say this clearly and without qualification: our emergency departments right across the country are extraordinary. They are places of precision, of courage and of relentless professionalism. They are where cardiac arrests are resuscitated, where strokes are thrombolysed, where polytrauma is stabilised and where lives are quite literally pulled back from the brink. The clinicians who work in these environments are among the very best our system has to offer, and they aren't the problem. They are exceptional, but they carry a burden that they were never designed to carry alone, because alongside those life-threatening emergencies sits a growing volume of urgent but not life-threatening care. When everything is treated in the same place, pressure builds, waits lengthen and systems strain. That is why the Medicare urgent care clinic at Erina matters. This is not a substitute for emergency medicine; it is complement to it.

It is a clinically appropriate setting for simple fractures, lacerations, acute infections and respiratory illness—care that is urgent, but care that is not critical. It is bulk-billed, walk in and delivered by highly skilled clinicians. This is what a good system looks like. It is about streaming patients safely. It is about preserving capacity. It is about ensuring that, when someone arrives in the emergency department in septic shock or cardiac arrest or major trauma, the system is ready—not stretched, not delayed, but ready.

For the Central Coast, this clinic means better flow and safer care right across the health system. It means dignity in access. It means clarity in care. And it means a system that works in the way that it was designed to and the way that it should. This is how we strengthen Medicare—not just in principle but, indeed, in practice. This is why the new Erina urgent care clinic matters, alongside our pre-existing Peninsula Medicare urgent care clinic.