Portfolio — 14 May 2026
Speaking to his Shortland electorate priorities in the House, Minister for Pacific Island Affairs and Defence Industry Pat Conroy detailed a layered set of primary-care interventions anchored by a $25 million package to establish six bulk-billing clinics where patients pay nothing beyond a Medicare card. He acknowledged that tripling the bulk-billing incentive has not lifted regional rates to the national average, framing the new clinics and expanded urgent-care services as the government's direct response to that gap.
Conroy also pointed to restored doctor-supply measures — reversing a ban on overseas-trained and Australian scholarship doctors practising locally, and reinstating the distribution priority access listing for Lake Macquarie and the Central Coast — as structural fixes running alongside the funding commitments.
The official records this note draws on — the raw primary documents themselves, as published.