Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health and Ageing. How are the Albanese Labor government's investments in bulk-billing and urgent care making it easier for Australians to see a doctor, after a decade of cuts and neglect?

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

Through the member, can I thank the staff of the National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre, which is stationed in Darwin. They are staffing the Bullsbrook quarantine facility down in Perth, and I announced only a few hours ago that the mandatory quarantine period for the six returned passengers from MV Hondius impacted by the hantavirus outbreak would be extended by another three weeks. That will be staffed by the NCCTRC. Also, they're doing terrific work in communities, helping with the diphtheria outbreak.

More broadly, our government has been busy building a better health system for the Northern Territory, delivering on so many of the things that the member for Solomon and the member for Lingiari had been arguing for for years. Finally, Darwin now has its own medical school, having taken its first students this year. There's been a 30 per cent increase in hospital funding from the Commonwealth after years of underfunding from previous governments. The NT hospitals will receive, over the course of our funding agreement, $1 billion more than they would have received if we'd rolled over the Morrison and Turnbull arrangements. As the member well knows, this week we opened the 136th urgent care clinic in the northern suburbs of Darwin, just around the corner from the endometriosis clinic in Coconut Grove. The Palmerston urgent care clinic has already seen 37,000 patients, and now the people of Darwin, particularly in the northern suburbs, will get the benefit of high-quality urgent care seven days a week, fully bulk-billed.

Without a doubt the most remarkable transformation and change we're seeing in Solomon is in bulk-billing. It's the beating heart of Medicare and the guarantee started by Labor that Australians can be confident that they can go to the doctor whenever they need to, rather than when they can afford to. I'm pleased to say Solomon has seen the biggest increase in bulk-billing of any electorate since our record investment last year. The number of 100 per cent bulk-billing general practices in Solomon has tripled just since 1 November. The bulk-billing rate in Solomon is now 90 per cent, where we want the country to be by 2030. It is 23 per cent higher than it was in 2023, when we made our first investments, and the biggest increases have been for those who don't have the benefit of a concession card. In just five months those people in Darwin have seen an increase of more than 20 per cent in their bulk-billing rate.

We remember that the Leader of the Opposition called our investments in urgent care and in bulk-billing, which the member for Solomon asked about, 'wasteful spending', but the people of Solomon know that a stronger Medicare is making a real difference to their lives.