Ellie Whiteaker (WA, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

One hundred and thirty-seven is quite an interesting number. It's a prime number—the 33rd prime number, to be exact—and it's a number that's been the subject of much intrigue over many, many decades. In physics, a number approximately equal to one over 137 is known as the fine structure constant, which dictates the strength of the electromagnetic force. The physicist Richard Feynman famously called this one of the greatest mysteries of physics. Now, I'm not going to talk too much about physics in this place tonight, because I was much more of an arts and social sciences kind of student, but I think it's an important reminder that 137 is a very special number.

But the reason why it's particularly special is that 137 is the number of Medicare urgent care clinics that Labor promised to deliver and that have now opened around the country. That's 137 clinics from Perth right across to Canberra, up to the north and right across our wonderful country that you can walk into to get the health care you need with nothing but your Medicare card. If I were allowed to have props in here, I would, of course, hold up my Medicare card, but I can't do that in this place. So all you need is your Medicare card to walk into one of our 137 Medicare urgent care clinics and access health care.

These clinics are so important to Australians, and I was particularly reminded of this when, a couple of months ago, I took my son there for one of the many ear infections, flus or eye infections that kids get at child care these days. I could see the variety of things that were being treated by the wonderful doctors and nurses at my local Medicare urgent care clinic in Beeliar. One lovely man told me that he had been bitten by a wombat at the wildlife park where he worked in Perth and so had headed to the urgent care clinic on his way home to get it checked out. I thought that was possibly one of the more interesting things that they see at those clinics. I spoke to a woman who had recently had surgery and was worried about an infection and so had called into the clinic to get it checked out. It really is a wonderful place. People don't have to worry about ringing up, making an appointment with their GP and, in many cases, paying to see their GP.

Why do these clinics matter so much? People feel that stress of thinking, 'I've got a medical issue; it's urgent, but it's not an emergency.' They don't want to head to an ER and spend potentially a long period of time waiting. They don't want to add extra stress to local hospitals. So we know that, particularly for families with young children, these are really important services. One in four visits to Medicare urgent care clinics, in fact, are for patients under the age of 15. I know that there are many parents today holding sticky toddlers in the waiting rooms of those Medicare urgent care clinics right across the country, as I have done many, many times.

A particularly interesting fact that I learnt today is that there are more Medicare urgent care clinics in Australia than there are MECCA stores. MECCA is one of the biggest and most successful retailers around the country and very popular, I think, with my generation of women, but we've opened more free Medicare urgent care clinics than there are MECCA stores. It makes me so proud of the work that our government is doing. It's another Labor legacy, just like Medicare. It's a logical next step in that legacy, and it's something that, as a Labor senator, I am extremely proud of.

Labor built Medicare, and we will always protect it. We will always protect these 137 Medicare urgent-care clinics by making them a permanent part of our healthcare system so that people of all generations, for generations to come, can rely on the care that they need. This is, of course, on top of our record investment in bulk-billing so more people can see the GP for free; our plan for cheaper medicines; our record investment in women's health, endo and pelvic pain clinics right across the country; and cheaper contraceptive pills.