ADJOURNMENT
Ms THWAITES (Jagajaga) (11:57): Our government is delivering real change in communities in Jagajaga, strengthening Medicare, investing in skills and training and providing more support for families. These investments are making a real difference to people at a tough time in my community. Since we expanded incentives for bulk-billing and for GPs to bulk-bill last November, we have seen more and more GP clinics in Jagajaga move to fully bulk-bill patients.
Greensborough Medical and Dental Centre was one of the first local practices to make the switch, and I'm really pleased that others have followed, including Glen Katherine Medical Clinic in St Helena, Eltham Ridge Medical Centre and MacLeod Medical Practice. This means that more people in Jagajaga can see a GP with their Medicare card and without worrying about an out-of-pocket cost.
I encourage more local clinics to continue to take up this investment. I hear constantly from locals about how important it is to them to be able to see a bulk-billing GP. We are supporting this with our Medicare urgent care clinics.
We have two Medicare urgent care clinics locally, one in Burgundy Street in Heidelberg and one on Main Road in Eltham. These are supporting our community to get the health care they need when they need it—with their Medicare card. Our government has now made Medicare urgent care clinics a permanent part of our health system, and that's because, as a Labor government, we believe in Medicare.
We understand that it is the bedrock of our health system and the bedrock of what Australians expect in terms of being able to access health care. Those opposite spent years and years attacking Medicare, and they're still at it. John Howard once described bulk-billing as an 'absolute rort'.
Through the decade of cut and neglect that we had, the former government basically tried to abolish bulk-billing entirely. That's what their settings did. The current shadow treasurer, the member for Goldstein, has described Medicare as 'a system designed to keep people ill', and, just recently, we've had the shadow minister having to ask the department for help in understanding what Medicare actually means—asking officials to provide a definition.
Doesn't that really sum up the attitude of those opposite towards Medicare? Well, Labor know what Medicare means, and we know what it means to have strong Medicare in our communities, where locals can see a GP that is bulk-billed or where they can walk into one of those Medicare urgent care clinics. Our government is also investing in local opportunities for people to get the education and skills they need without the cost holding them back.
In Jagajaga, we have two fantastic local TAFE campuses. Melbourne Polytechnic has campuses in both Greensborough and West Heidelberg. Our government has made free TAFE permanent.
Through our Key Apprenticeship Program, we're now providing additional support in the occupations that Australia needs, particularly in housing construction and in the transition to net zero. I was really pleased recently to be able to visit family run Demand Power in West Heidelberg, a business being run by Tracey and Ben. I visited with Minister Andrew Giles to talk about their work and meet the electrical apprentices who are learning their trade there.
This is a great local business not just supporting the transition to electrification that's underway in households across our community but also supporting our next generation of workers. If we are going to build more homes, deliver the energy transition and strengthen our care economy, we need to invest in the people who will do that work. That's what this business is doing locally, but it's what our government is supporting local businesses to be able to do, through our programs.
We also, of course, need to be supporting people while they are training. That's why I'm so pleased that we are now supporting students with our Commonwealth Prac Payment, changing the fact that, for too many students taking up some of these really important professions, it's been too hard because of that requirement to do unpaid placements. Students undertaking mandatory placements can now receive more than $338 a week, and from July next year we'll be supporting students in 10 additional allied health disciplines, including physiotherapy and clinical psychology.
We expect that around 95,000 students each year will benefit. Again, this highlights the difference between our approach and the Liberals'. When the Liberals were last in government in Victoria, they cut around $1 billion in TAFE funding.
They sacked more than 2,000 TAFE teachers, and they closed 22 campuses, including in Greensborough. My community has not forgotten this. They have not forgotten the record when it comes to the Liberals.
When it comes to TAFE and training, they close it. When it comes to Medicare, they rip it away. Our government is investing in communities; those opposite seek to shut them down.