Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Hansard source

You're right, Senator. We are expanding the availability of free urgent health care by opening another 47 Medicare urgent care clinics. That's 14 new clinics in NSW, nine in Victoria, 10 in Queensland, six in Western Australia, three in South Australia, three in Tasmania, one in the Northern Territory and one in the ACT. These services are a game changer for families right across the country. Australians have made more than two million visits to Labor's free Medicare urgent care clinics. One-third of patients are under the age of 15. Nearly half of the patients who attended a Medicare urgent care clinic would have used a hospital emergency department if no clinic had been available. Thirty per cent of visits to Medicare urgent care clinics have taken place on weekends, and 25 per cent of patients have attended after 5 pm on a weekday. These clinics are filling a gap.