Mark Butler
Hindmarsh · Australian Labor Party · Australia
“But earlier today we were all in here voting on the latest instalment in the member for Lindsay's ongoing but thus far unsuccessful campaign to rebrand the Liberal Party.”
“I thank the member for Werriwa for her contribution and for her really strong support for everything we're doing to make Medicare stronger and make medicines cheaper. I thank all members for their contributions to the debate on this bill. As the member for Werriwa said, Medicare is the very best of Australia.”
“I thank the member for his question, which is a question I've answered before in this place since the budget. As I've said on a number of occasions publicly and in this chamber, the additional support that over-65s have received since about 2004 for their private health insurance premium is something we did revisit given the significant p…”
“But, under ours, they'll receive an increase of more than 20 per cent, or an additional $160 million in this year alone, which means more doctors, more nurses and better care in Tasmania.”
“Importantly, this bill provides stability so patients can continue to benefit from the outcomes of these programs and strengthened access to primary care.”
“That approach gives providers and the government greater certainty while preserving the flexibility needed to keep program settings up to date as health system needs evolve. Importantly, the bill does not change the underlying policy settings of existing programs.”
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“We also delivered the three biggest general increases to the Medicare rebate in 30 years. The biggest, the second biggest and the third biggest since Paul Keating was Prime Minister. Also, only three months ago, for the first time ever, we delivered bulk-billing support to every single Australian, not just those with a concession card. I'm happy to report that, already, that is making a huge difference out in our community. The member for Calwell and I visited the Craigieburn Medical & Dental Centre late last year. Before 1 November, that centre charged gap fees, but, after our incentives were announced, GPs sat down and crunched the numbers and realised that taking up that offer was better for the practice. It was better for GPs individually and obviously it was better for patients.”
“It was because the Liberal Party government had frozen the Medicare rebate and frozen the income of doctors year after year after year—most of those years—as a result of a budget decision overseen by the Leader of the Opposition, of course, when she was the health minister. Because of that freezing of their income, GP leaders had started to advise their members to walk away from bulk-billing. When we came to government, we were utterly determined to turn that around. In our first full budget, delivered by the Treasurer in 2023, we tripled the incentive that GPs get paid for bulk-billing pensioners, concession card holders and kids. It was a request from the College of GPs, and, when we delivered on it, they called it a game changer. Bulk-billing rates for those Australians are now comfortably back up over 90 per cent.”
“The member for Calwell is such a terrific advocate for Medicare in his community and in this place because he knows that Medicare is Australia's most important program. He also knows that the beating heart of Medicare is bulk-billing—the promise that every Australian should feel that they can go to the GP whenever they need to, rather than when they feel they can afford to; the promise that all they should need to take to the GP is that little green and gold Medicare card. But we know that, when we came to government three and a bit years ago, bulk-billing was in freefall. That was the description given to it by the College of GPs. And we also know that the reason why it was in freefall was no mystery at all.”
“It will help children with support needs be identified as early as possible. And, importantly, it won't need a formal diagnosis, which we know can take ages and ages to receive and cost thousands and thousands of dollars. Instead, support will be easy and quick to access, and it will be available where young people and their parents live, learn and play. In short, it will give every child in this country the best opportunity to thrive.”
“One in six junior primary school boys now are on the NDIS, and in some parts of the country it's as high as one in four. This is simply not what the scheme was set up to do, and it's not the best way to support young children with low to moderate needs. That's why I was also delighted on Friday that state premiers also agreed to our plan to introduce the Thriving Kids program. I want to thank the member for Macarthur, the member for Kooyong and a number of other members in this place for their really quick but comprehensive inquiry into this program that they delivered very recently. I also want to thank the Thriving Kids Advisory Group, which I co-chaired with Professor Frank Oberklaid, for their work to set up this model of a program. It's a program that will be rolled out over the coming couple of years.”
“But I've also said that an eight per cent growth target for a scheme with a relatively stable population base is still not sustainable. On Friday, state premiers and chief ministers agreed with the Prime Minister and our government to work to get that growth rate down even further to five to six per cent or lower. Of course, we will do that work in close partnership with the disability community itself. But I make the point that sustainable growth in this scheme is not just important for the budget, although it is. It is also a critical way to ensure the long-term future of this absolutely critical scheme. The other concern that we encountered, though, was the huge number of young children enrolled onto the NDIS, particularly young boys.”
“Thank you to the member, who knows just how much the NDIS is a proud legacy of our Labor Party. It's a world-leading program of supports for people with significant and permanent—usually lifelong—disabilities. But when we came to government we found a scheme that was running off the rails. At a time when the scheme should already have been pretty much fully matured, it was growing at a whopping 22 per cent per year. Our government immediately started the hard work to get that growth rate down to a more sustainable level. We set a target of eight per cent growth this year, in 2026, and the mid-year budget update that the Treasurer published only several weeks ago reported that we are on track to meet that target.”
“She said: My daughter used the walk in Medicare clinic at Norwood on NYE— and it's pretty hard to find a GP clinic open— It was great She got the high quality of care she needed in a timely fashion without sitting around in emergency for hours. That was the promise that the member for Sturt made, and it's just one of 122 Medicare urgent care clinics that are open right now. Another 15 clinics are opening in coming weeks.”
“Thank you to the member for Sturt. She's still in her first year, but she's already making a terrific contribution in this place and greatly representing her community in the eastern suburbs of Adelaide. Particularly on health, she brings really valuable insights from her time as a board director of the Royal Flying Doctor Service, and she's already delivered on the commitment she made to open a Medicare urgent care clinic in Norwood. It opened on 17 December. It's in the heart of her community on the parade there in Norwood, and it's already seen hundreds and hundreds of patients, like Hermione Farmer's daughter. Ms Farmer wrote online about her experience.”
“For pensioners and concession card holders, we haven't just frozen their medicine prices this year; we've frozen them for the rest of the decade. When we came to government, a million Australians were saying they weren't filling scripts that their doctor had said were important for their health, because of cost. These cheaper medicines policies are changing that equation. It's good for their hip pocket, but it's also good for our nation's health.”
“In our first few months in government, three years ago, we slashed, by 25 per cent, the maximum amount that pensioners and concession card holders would pay for all of their medicine needs in a given year. Since then, pensioners and concession card holders have received an additional 87½ million scripts completely free of charge—scripts they otherwise would have had to pay for—saving them hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. Finally, we delivered 60-day scripts for hundreds of common medicines, saving patients more time and even more money. As the Prime Minister has already said, last month we delivered another huge cut to the maximum price of PBS scripts, lowering it to just $25, the same level it was way back in 2004.”
“On Sunday I was delighted to announce the government's 399th new listing on the PBS, a drug called Andriga-10. It's a new combination therapy for advanced prostate cancer that has proved resistant to surgical or chemical castration. Around 2,000 men will have access to this medicine, including Charles Abdilla, a terrific 84-year-old who joined us at the announcement at the Royal Adelaide Hospital on Sunday. Before Sunday, this new combination therapy would have cost around $900 per script, or $10,000 a year. Now it will be available to those 2,000 men at affordable PBS prices. As the member for Hunter knows, we've been busy ever since we were elected, making PBS scripts cheaper and cheaper and cheaper.”
“I thank the member for Hunter for the question but also for his amazing work as the Special Envoy for Men's Health. He's busy lifting awareness and having honest, sometimes brutally frank conversations with Australian men about looking after themselves, about getting checked regularly, about seeking help if something doesn't seem quite right and about looking out for each other as well. I'm delighted that the member has agreed to take a leading role this year in the fight against prostate cancer as well. Of course, this is Australia's most common cancer. One in five Australian men will receive a prostate cancer diagnosis at some point in their life. Although we have very, very high five-year survival rates, around 4,000 Australian men every single year lose their battle to this cancer.”
“Quite explicitly, a part of that negotiation has been to continue, and maybe extend and expand, arrangements, including Commonwealth funding for longer-stay older patients, as I said, to try to avoid them having to go to hospital in the first place and, if they do end up in hospital, to have a smooth transition out of hospital into an alternative place, whether that's at home with a home-care package or into a residential aged-care facility. Those negotiations are ongoing. We hope to strike a deal, particularly before the South Australian government goes into caretaker mode. If we're not able to do that, we start to get right up against the end of this financial year, given we only have a one-year agreement so far, and this will be a big part of those negotiations going forward.”
“That, ultimately, in some cases, depends on there being a residential aged-care bed available to them, and we know there is a shortage of residential aged-care beds right across the system. That is why we put so much energy, particularly under the former minister for aged care, into designing a new aged-care system that would stimulate new investment—investment that had fallen off a cliff, frankly, over the period leading into and certainly during the COVID pandemic. Now, we are still engaged with state governments about that. It is a significant part of the negotiations that remain underway between the Commonwealth and all state and territory governments for a new five-year hospital funding agreement.”
“This is increasing demand for residential aged care and it is increasing pressure, by extension, on our hospital system. From the first term of the Albanese government, we have undertaken arrangements with different state governments to fund programs to divert older Australians from hospitals in the first place; they include, in South Australia, geriatric outreach teams that go out to aged-care facilities to try to prevent admission in the first place. Those are working very, very well. They're the subject of Commonwealth funding. We're also trying to ensure, as far as possible, that people are able to leave a hospital if they are medically able to do so.”
“I thank the member for her question, for her deep interest in aged-care issues, in particular, and for her engagement with me and with other aged-care ministers over the course of her time in government. As you know, there's been quite a deep public discussion about the issue of longer-stay older patients in public hospitals across the country, perhaps with the exception of Victoria, where there's a pretty strong state-run nursing home system that takes a lot of those patients more directly. But there's no question—the increase in longer-stay older patients across the rest of the country is quite significant and, frankly, tracks the increase we are seeing in the number of very old Australians as a result of the ageing of the baby boomer population.”
“We stand with the Jewish community and with every family member and friend who has been touched by this tragedy. To those grieving, I offer my deepest condolences. Australia mourns with you.”
“I acknowledge the deep pain and the fear this is causing Jewish Australians, and I acknowledge the trauma and anxiety gripping the Jewish community and the wider Bondi community—something that, in our health portfolio, we have been working on very closely with NSW Health. Our government, along with NSW Health, have moved quickly to deliver immediate mental health supports on the ground and across Jewish communities right across Australia because we know that the trauma is deep and we know from other traumatic events—some of them natural disasters or attacks like this—that the tail of mental distress is a long one that governments are going to need to provide support for. Australia will never forget this awful day, the lives that were so cruelly taken or the heroism shown by so many first responders and people in the health sector.”
“Only Jewish parents, as we've heard through so many contributions, have to watch their children walk into childcare centres or walk into schools surrounded by twelve-foot fences with security guards. Only Jewish aged-care facilities—and this is not widely known—have had to hire security guards 24/7 on police advice because of the threats of violence directed towards aged-care facilities: violence directed towards older Jewish Australians, many of them Holocaust survivors, in a facility for the final months of their life. And now, of course, there is the Bondi terror attack, the most horrific and shocking manifestation of antisemitism our country has ever seen.”
“Talking to that community, the sense of terror—obviously for loved ones back in Israel, but also the sense of terror here in Australia—and the sense that something had changed in a step-change way was really quite profoundly moving to me and, I imagine, to others who were at those events. It was a spike in antisemitism that's continued since 7 October 2023. It started in the hours of that massacre. It really came from an unholy collection of disparate groups coming together spewing hate: the open chanting of phrases on our streets that urged the destruction of the only Jewish state on the planet; the intimidation of Jewish students on campus; and so much more exclusion and discrimination right throughout civic, commercial, cultural and academic life, as well as in a sector I most deal with—the health sector.”
“That environment that allowed Jewish Australians to lead full, contributing lives—largely unmolested by the antisemitism in other parts of the world—has been under serious threat since the massacre on 7 October 2023. I had the privilege of representing the government at large gatherings of the Jewish community in the eastern suburbs of Sydney—first of all, only a matter of two or three days after the massacre, and then on the 12-month anniversary of the massacre. I remember the former deputy prime minister, the member for Riverina, being there. I was there speaking on behalf of the government with then leader of the opposition Peter Dutton and NSW Premier Chris Minns, and with thousands of members of those communities, on those two occasions.”
“My mother and her mother—although that side of the family moved to Adelaide and strayed from the Jewish faith—always taught me and my family to be proud of our Jewish heritage and of a country that gave a safe space for our forebears to come to, free from the antisemitism that was so rife across the globe, and allowed them to build such a wonderful life for them and their family, now six generations ago. After World War II, Australia welcomed even more Jewish migrants and enthusiastically supported the creation of the State of Israel. Australia famously cast the first vote in favour of that motion at the United Nations, a decision I remain unshakably proud of.”
“Able to participate fully in civil and commercial life, and having built an extraordinary contributing livelihood, Abraham bragged at one stage that he had overseen the laying of more railway track than any other person in Victoria at the time. It was a community in Melbourne, attracted to the richness of the gold rush, that ultimately gave Australia its first locally-born governor-general, Sir Isaac Isaacs, and our greatest general ever, Sir John Monash, who led my great-grandfather onto Anzac Cove on 25 April 1915.”
“It has been 36 days since the devastating antisemitic terrorist attack at Bondi Beach; 36 days since 15 innocent people had their lives so cruelly stolen from them; 36 days of unimaginable grief for families who will never again hold their loved ones, never hear their laughter, never share another moment together. The Bondi terror attack was an act of pure hatred and cowardice. First and foremost, obviously, it was an act of mass murder targeted at Jewish Australians. But, by extension, it was a deliberate attempt to instil fear and to divide our community. It was an act of antisemitism. We must call it what it was. More than 150 years ago, my great-great-great-grandparents, Abraham and Sarah, migrated to Australia to join a growing Jewish community in vibrant 1870s Melbourne.”
“All you'll need to take is your Medicare card. If that's not enough, two weeks after that, the Prime Minister attended the Pharmacy Guild conference and announced our latest wave of cheaper medicines measures: freezing the maximum script price for pensioners all the way to the end of this decade and slashing the maximum amount that general patients pay at the pharmacy counter to just $25 on 1 January—the same price it was way back in 2004. This was the most comprehensive health policy package any party has taken to an election since Bob Hawke promised to introduce Medicare in 1983, and we are delivering on every single thing that we promised because, for this party, for the Australian people, nothing is more important than a strong Medicare.”
“Just a couple of weeks after that, the Prime Minister announced the largest ever investment in bulk-billing in Medicare's history. Already, well over a thousand general practices have gone from charging gap fees last month to bulk-billing all of their patients this month, and that number is increasing every day. That same day, we promised more doctors into the system. This year we've trained more junior doctors as GPs than ever before, and next year we'll break that record again. Just two weeks after that announcement, we announced 50 more Medicare urgent care clinics. Three are already open; 47 will be announced before Christmas and will be open in the following weeks. Then four out of five Australians will live within a 20-minute drive of an urgent care clinic open seven days a week, with extended hours and fully bulk-billed.”
“Thank you to the member for Lalor for her question and her support for a stronger Medicare. There are now 29 Medicare bulk-billing practices in her electorate that are bulk-billing all of their patients all of the time, as well as the Werribee urgent care clinic that's seen almost 30,000 patients, and early next year there will be a new endometriosis and pelvic pain clinic in Werribee as well. This government is ending the year as we began it—focused on a stronger Medicare and cheaper medicines. In just the first sitting week of this year, the government announced a landmark women's health package, listing, for the first time in decades, new contraceptives and new menopause treatments. Since then, more than 550,000 Australian women have saved tens of millions of dollars at the pharmacy counter because of that decision.”
“Until now, this treatment cost $440,000 for a course of treatment, but now 1,400 Australians every year will be able to get access to it at affordable PBS prices. And we're making those scripts even cheaper. Already, Australians have saved $1.9 billion at the pharmacy counter because of our cheaper medicines measures. Pensioners have— Lights in the chamber having flickered—”
“Thanks to the Member for Griffith. She knows that the PBS is one of Australia's great social programs. For more than 80 years now, it's guaranteed access for Australians to the best medicines in the world at affordable prices. Since we came to government we have made more than 350 new or expanded listings on the PBS. This month we added a new treatment for multiple myeloma called Darzalex, which is the first new treatment for that condition in 12 years. Around 2,600 Australians are diagnosed with multiple myeloma every year, and the stakeholder Myeloma Australia has been lobbying for this listing for years now. Their legendary ambassador—we all know Sandy Roberts—described the listing as 'absolutely fantastic news'.”
“To maintain integrity and safety, the bill also amends the Health Insurance Act 1973. It subjects designated RN prescribing under the PBS to the Professional Services Review scheme, a peer-review mechanism that safeguards the PBS and other programs. This bill delivers on the government's commitment to ensure our health workforce operates at their full scope, enhancing safe and timely access to medicines. It's a win for nurses and a win for all Australians. I commend the bill to the House. Debate adjourned.”
“The list of medicines able to be prescribed under the PBS by a designated registered nurse prescriber will be considered by the independent Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee or PBAC. Since 2017, the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia and Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officers have conducted extensive research and consultation on nurse prescribing models. The NMBA, the board, developed the standards for designated registered nurse prescribers through multiple rounds of public consultation, which received strong support. All health ministers have endorsed the scheduled medicines standard, which came into effect in September this year. The first cohort of nurses is expected to complete their education and receive endorsement as designated RN prescribers by July 2026.”
“Designated registered nurse prescribing strengthens the health system by easing workforce pressures and building long-term capacity and sustainability. Improved access to primary health care reduces avoidable hospital visits and preventable hospitalisations. In rural and remote communities, people often have to travel long distances and face long wait times for even basic care. This reform allows people, especially those in rural and regional areas, to receive affordable treatment with greater equity. Designated registered nurse prescribers will help relieve pressure across acute and primary care. They will ensure individuals receive care when and where they need it.”
“This change empowers nurses to provide safe, high-quality care directly to people in the community, reducing the need for GP visits or long waits in overcrowded hospital emergency departments. Enabling prescribing under the PBS by designated registered nurse prescribers ensures the medicines they prescribe are affordable for patients. This reform aligns with the government's commitment to cheaper medicines, and with the National Medicines Policy. It promotes equitable, affordable, and timely access to high-quality medicines and services. Currently, our registered nurses, who are highly skilled and highly educated, remain underutilised in primary care. Allowing them to prescribe under the PBS will boost efficiency, strengthen care coordination, and ensure GPs and nurse practitioners can focus on patients with more complex needs.”
“I move: That this bill be now read a second time. The Health Legislation Amendment (Prescribing of Pharmaceutical Benefits) Bill 2025 introduces historic reforms to health legislation that empower nurses to work to their full scope of practice and improve access to medicines for people across Australia. This bill advances scope of practice reforms identified by the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce and the subsequent Unleashing the Potential of our Health Workforce review. It amends the National Health Act 1953 to authorise registered nurses, endorsed under the Registration standard: Endorsement for scheduled medicines—designated registered nurse prescriber, to prescribe certain medicines under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), attracting Commonwealth subsidies.”
“We were delighted to be in Bunbury, and we noticed the member for Forrest's van following us around, keen to hear the story of us strengthening Medicare for the people of Western Australia. The Prime Minister didn't just go to Bunbury. He went to Busselton as well and met with the Busselton Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and I can assure the member for Forrest that there will be many, many more visits back to the electorate of Forrest because we've got a great story to tell!”
“Already, 10 GP clinics in the electorate of Forrest have signed up as Medicare bulk-billing practices, bulk-billing all of their patients all of the time. Already the Bunbury urgent care clinic has seen more than 35,000 people, fully bulk-billed, taking pressure off the busy emergency department at the Bunbury hospital. Indeed, the Bunbury urgent care clinic has been so successful that at the last election we committed additional funds to help it boost staffing at busy times of the day. We also promised a Medicare mental health centre for Bunbury, and we'll deliver on that too. I don't recall the opposition supporting either of those commitments, but we know that our strengthening Medicare agenda is working for the people of Forrest, which is why we were all so delighted to be in the electorate of Forrest last week.”
“That's one of 47 clinics that we'll announce over the coming couple of weeks and will open over the coming couple of months, and it will take the network to 137 urgent care clinics. They're all open seven days a week, with extended hours, and, importantly, they're fully bulk-billing, so all you need to take along is your Medicare card. Once the network is fully up and running, it will see two million patients every single year, most of whom would otherwise have had to go to their local emergency department. It's not just Bullwinkel that's benefiting from our strengthening Medicare agenda. That plan is working right across the great state of Western Australia. Take a seat like Forrest, for example.”
“Only 10 nurses have ever served in this parliament, and three of them are in the chamber right now, including the terrific member for Bullwinkel. As a government committed to strengthening Medicare, we on this side are so lucky to have nurses, doctors, psychologists and a pharmacist all helping us to guide that important agenda. Last week the member for Bullwinkel and I visited the Mount Helena medical practice, one of the GP clinics in her electorate that have already registered to become Medicare bulk-billing practices, bulk-billing all of their patients all of the time. Shortly we'll announce the location of the Mundaring urgent care clinic that the member for Bullwinkel promised at the last election.”
“These are all essential after the decade of cuts and neglect, which the Leader of the Opposition interjects about time and time again—the Leader of the Opposition who, as health minister, distinguished herself as the only health minister in history never to increase the Medicare rebate once. A big doughnut from the Leader of the Opposition—a health minister who extended Peter Dutton's Medicare freeze from two years to six years. It's no wonder the Australian people know who to trust with Medicare, and it's not those opposite.”
“Unapologetically, some of our biggest commitments at the last two elections, from this prime minister, have been to deliver a stronger Medicare, and we're delivering on every single one of those commitments. We're delivering more bulk-billing for more patients more of the time. We're delivering more urgent care clinics—47 of which will open over the next several weeks. We're delivering more doctors, including medical school places, which the education minister talked about that earlier today. And we're delivering even cheaper medicines again, on 1 January.”
“That number includes well over 1,000 who, last month, were charging gap fees but, this month, are bulk-billing all of their patients, all of the time. And that number is increasing every single day. For Labor, for the member for Banks and for everyone on this side of the House, that matters, because, for Labor, bulk-billing is the beating heart of Medicare. That is why, back in 2023, we tripled the bulk-billing incentive paid for bulk-billing concession card holders, pensioners and kids, turning that bulk-billing rate around, which now sits comfortably at over 90 per cent. It's why we delivered the three biggest general increases to the Medicare rebate since Paul Keating was Prime Minister, easing the squeeze after the Liberal Party's Medicare freeze, and it's why we delivered this record investment this month.”
“Thanks to the member for Banks. He and I visited the health hub at Narwee only a few weeks ago. I'm delighted to say that the health hub has registered as a bulk-billing practice for Medicare—bulk-billing all of their patients, all of the time. As well as receiving bulk-billing payments for all of their patients, including those without a concession card, for the first time, that practice will also receive an additional payment of 12½ per cent on top of their Medicare income, because they are 100 per cent bulk-billing. The health hub is just one of 18 clinics in the Banks electorate who are now 100 per cent bulk-billing clinics. Almost 2,800 practices have now registered as 100 per cent bulk-billing clinics.”
“Obviously, as the member knows, this is all complicated by the fact that Healthscope, more broadly, which runs well over 30 hospitals, including in the Northern Beaches and across the country, is now in receivership. So we are taking the lead as the Commonwealth for making sure that there is continuity of service from all of those other Healthscope hospitals. We took a decision as two governments that New South Wales Health would lead on, essentially, unwinding arrangements and guaranteeing private and public services on the Northern Beaches site. But, if the member wants me to update her and keep representing these issues to the New South Wales minister, of course, I'd be more than happy to.”
“I do know, though, that the very hard work the New South Wales Minister for Health is doing here to unwind this privatisation, over a relatively short period of time, is one that is seeking to reassure, first of all, doctors, nurses and other healthcare staff at that hospital that they'll have jobs and that the clinical services at this hospital will be up to scratch. I think there's a close process of consultation there. They'll all have jobs offered. Their entitlements will transfer to NSW Health if they choose to take up that offer. As the member also knows, the New South Wales government is consulting closely with clinicians and the community about what private hospital services will continue to be available on that precinct, on that hospital site, and I'm keeping in touch with the New South Wales minister about that.”
“It doesn't integrate properly into the public hospital system—that's what the New South Wales Auditor-General found—and there is a tension between profit and proper clinical care that should not happen in an acute care public hospital. The private hospital system, as the member knows better than most, is very different. It's largely there for planned procedures— Of course, here you go: the Liberal Party seeking to defend failed privatisation experiments, because, at the end of the day, like Pavlov's dog, they return to the idea that we should have a privatised model of health care. That's not the member's view. It's not the Labor Party's view.”
“I acknowledge the member's advocacy for the return of this privatised hospital, effectively, to public hands. Can I remind the House that no Labor government has privatised hospitals over the last 30 years, while Liberal government after Liberal government around the country has persisted with this failed experiment of privatising public acute care hospitals. The first time I dealt with it was in the north-eastern suburbs of Adelaide, back in the 1990s, when Healthscope—the same company—was given the contract to run the Modbury Hospital. The member for Makin will remember: it was a debacle and had to be brought in-house. We've seen repeat after repeat of this failed Liberal Party experiment to privatise our public acute care hospitals. We know the Auditor-General's report from New South Wales confirmed that sense of failure.”
“Rounding it out, in the coming couple of weeks we'll be in a position to announce the provider for the Shellharbour urgent care clinic, in the southern part of the Illawarra, as well. That's just one of the 50 urgent care clinics we promised across the country at the last election. Three of them are already open. I'm confident the rest of them will be opened over the course of this summer—hopefully, as many as possible by Christmas. Once that is done, two million people—like the health reporter from the SMH every single year will get that high-quality urgent care. (Time expired)”
“And, with all of the zeal you would expect from a convert, he then went on to describe a very unfortunate incident where his surfboard went into his foot, and cut it quite considerably, on the weekend. He went into the Corrimal urgent care clinic, which he found on his phone. He received incredibly high-quality urgent care, completely free of charge. As I say, I thanked him for it. He's written this very fine piece promoting what is a terrific initiative for a stronger Medicare for the whole country. We have two urgent care clinics in the Illawarra already—30,000 people through the Corrimal urgent care clinic, and 20,000 through the Dapto urgent care clinic, in the neighbouring electorate of Whitlam.”
“Can I say that, in just the last week, the number of bulk-billing clinics in her electorate hasn't just doubled; it hasn't just tripled; it has quadrupled, in just a week. We've seen a big increase in the neighbouring electorate of Whitlam as well—a big increase in bulk-billing for the people of the Illawarra. She is also a great advocate for the Corrimal urgent care clinic in Wollongong. Already that has seen 30,000 people from her community, all fully bulk-billed, getting high-quality urgent care. She pointed out that there was a particularly high-profile patient there recently: the health reporter from the Sydney Morning Herald , who wrote a piece this morning, titled 'I thought Albo's urgent care clinics were a waste—until I needed one'!”