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

The Albanese government has fully delivered on our election commitment to open an additional 50 Medicare urgent care clinics, and that means every single one of the 137 Medicare urgent care clinics we promised when we came to government are now open across the nation. For your home state, Senator Ananda-Rajah, that means 29 clinics providing bulk-billed urgent care for Victorians when they need it most. What does it mean in practice? Well, that just means mums and dads taking their kids to a clinic after a bad injury at Saturday sport without sitting for hours in the emergency department. It means a tradie with a deep cut can get treated the same day, close to home. It means an older Australian with a bad flare-up can get urgent treatment quickly without waiting days for a GP appointment. About four out of five Australians now live within a 20-minute drive of an urgent care clinic, and we have seen 3.1 million visits to Medicare urgent care clinics across Australia since the first one opened in June 2023.

We have heard that about 45 per cent of patients going to an urgent care clinic would have otherwise sought treatment at an emergency department or called an ambulance, so make no mistake: these clinics are filling a gap. They're filling a gap in our health system; they're giving our hospitals, our doctors and our nurses the support that they need; and they work for one important reason, which is that the only thing that people need to access these clinics is their Medicare card, not their credit card, and thanks to this Labor government these urgent care clinics are here to stay. This is what Labor governments do. We focus on the interests of the Australian people, not on fighting with the other parties who compete for the same political territory—the Libs, the Nats and One Nation fighting amongst themselves. We deliver for working Australians. (Time expired)