Source: Prime Minister of Australia
ALI FRANCE, MEMBER FOR DICKSON: Good morning everyone. Welcome tot he Murrumba Downs Medicare Urgent Care Clinic. In particular I want to welcome our Prime Minister. This Medicare Urgent Care Clinic opened in 2023, and it has become a much-loved part of our local community. At the end of last year, I actually came here to deliver a cake, a big celebratory cake, to celebrate the milestone of 25,000 patients. And now we have over 32,000 patients, and that is such an incredible achievement. And I think that local residents are going to be so incredibly happy. We’ve just announced an extra $1.8 billion for our 135 Urgent Care Clinics right across the country to make them a permanent part of our health system. I know that everybody in this region, in the Moreton Bay region, will be so happy with that announcement.
But also, I want to say, it’s been one year since I became the Member for Dickson. And I’m so incredibly proud to be part of a Labor team that is prioritising Medicare. Over the past year, we have increased bulk billing. We have cheaper medicines. We have Medicare Mental Health Centres, one in my electorate in Strathpine. We have an awesome Women’s Health Package, and we also have these incredible Urgent Care Clinics. The whole reason I got involved in politics was to strengthen Medicare, and I’m just so proud of our team that we have been laser-focused on this, and now I’m going to hand over to the Prime Minister.
< ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER:
On Tuesday’s Budget, now just one week away, one of the centrepieces of that Budget will of course be once again strengthening Medicare. It was a key foundation of the election campaign in 2022, and then our re-election campaign last year. We committed to additional Urgent Care Clinics, and now 135 of those are open. And in Tuesday’s Budget, we will have $1.8 billion over the next five years, but ongoing to make Urgent Care Clinics a permanent feature of our health system. Urgent Care Clinics have been such a success because people can come in here whether to look after themselves or their children, given one in three of the three million Australians who’ve been to Urgent Care Clinics are there to look after a young one with a sports injury or with an issue that they may diagnose pretty quickly, but which is not life-threatening. It has built that gap between a local GP service and the emergency departments of hospitals, making a difference to both, taking pressure off emergency departments, but making sure people get the care that they need when they need it. And importantly, all they need is this little piece of plastic here, this green and gold symbol of Australian fairness and looking after each other that is so important with Medicare.
During that campaign as well, of course, we promised $8.5 billion for the bulk billing incentive to extend it right across the board. And we said we wanted to get bulk billing rates up, and that is happening as well. There are now eight clinics here in the electorate of Dickson that are fully bulk-billed. Five of those are new. So, what we’ve seen is a more than doubling of the access to fully bulk-billed services for GPs and for medical clinics in this electorate as well. When you combine Urgent Care Clinics with the bulk billing improvements, with cheaper medicines, just $25, the same price that they were in 2004, with as well the other work that we’ve been doing, endo and pelvic pain clinics, aimed specifically at women as part of our whole Women’s Health Package, the Medicare Mental Health Centres as well. 1800 Medicare, where people can get that 24-hour advice by just picking up their phone. All of these measures have been the most comprehensive health package to strengthen Medicare that we’ve seen from any government, and next Tuesday’s Budget will certainly be consistent with that.
This clinic here is seeing something like 275 patients a day on average. It’s one of 25 that are up and running here in Queensland. There’s going to be one just up the road at Caloundra on the Sunshine Coast open this financial year as well, which is one of the last two to bring up to the 137 that we committed to. This is about Labor governments delivery as a result of the commitments that we made and as a result of the election of people like Ali France here. And it was certainly a great way to begin the campaign in 2025, and on the 3rd of May it of course was a great opportunity to celebrate Ali’s election at that time. Happy to take questions.
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