PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS

Ms TRISH COOK (Bullwinkel) (11:34): I rise today to speak in absolutely strong support of this motion and to celebrate a profound transformation in how Australians access health care. Before entering this place, I spent decades working on the front line of the regional centres that these people opposite claim to represent. I know what happens in those regional centres.

I know what happens in general practices and in busy hospital wards, including emergency departments, having worked for four decades in these very places. I also know what it's like when your child has a fever or your husband has an accident and you need urgent care right there and then on the weekend. Prior to urgent care clinics, people would wait days for a booked out GP appointment—we acknowledge that, and that's why we're doing the biggest investment into bulk-billing that this country has seen—or they could spend a long time in emergency departments, which are completely overwhelming.

The Albanese Labor government's Medicare urgent care clinics, under the leadership of Minister Butler, have changed that equation completely. They are a genuine game changer for families. We don't just talk about fixing the healthcare system; we have delivered.

We promised 50 urgent care clinics in 2022, delivering 87, and now we've delivered another 50 just in this last year, for a total of 137 urgent care clinics around the country. The beauty of these clinics is that they're open seven days a week, with extended hours. You don't need an appointment or a referral, and, most importantly, they're 100 per cent bulk-billed.

When you walk in with your Medicare card, you get high-quality care from doctors and nurses just like me. In fact, the North Street Medical Centre urgent care clinic is right next door to the clinic that I used to work in, so I assure you it's very high standard. Across Australia, there have been 3.2 million presentations already on the record.

This not only takes pressure off the emergency departments. I say this, having worked in general practice. When you have a long list of 15-minute appointments, as the nurse—and every doctor has their appointments—and an urgent case walks in, of course, everybody suffers, because that urgent case needs to be attended to.

So this is really filling a gap in the market where people with urgent conditions can be seen promptly with great, high-quality care and GPs can get on with delivering primary health care, as we want them to. Twenty-nine per cent of visits to urgent care clinics take place on the weekend. Twenty-five per cent of weekday visits also happen at 5 pm or later.

That's just when the GPs are closing their doors. This is really filling a gap in the market, and crucially, nearly half—45 per cent of all patients—reported that, if their local urgent care clinic wasn't open, they would have headed to an emergency department or called an ambulance. Half of them—of course, that is taking massive pressure off the major hospitals.

If we look at my home state of WA, we have 14 operating Medicare urgent care clinics and a number of private ones as well. In those Medicare urgent care clinics, we have managed over 349,000 presentations. In Bullwinkel, my electorate, for the people of the Perth Hills, my firm commitment for the Labor government to put a Medicare urgent care clinic right in the heart of Mundaring has been delivered.

As a former Mundaring councillor and hills resident of 20 years, I know how desperately this was needed, and it has been incredibly well utilised. There have been over 3,300 presentations in just a few short months since it was opened. Families from the regional areas and from the Perth Hills don't have to travel all the way down the hill on the major highway to get the urgent care that they need, and it's because of successes like Mundaring that this year's budget took the next logical step—we didn't just extend the funding; we have made urgent care clinics a permanent part of Medicare.

Labor established Medicare, and only a Labor government will protect and strengthen it. Every Australian deserves quality health care close to home, and the Mundaring urgent care clinics are living proof that we have delivered exactly that. I commend the motion to the House.