Minister for Health and Aged Care, press conference – 3 March 2025

RENEE COFFEY, LABOR CANDIDATE FOR GRIFFITH: Hello, my name is Renee Coffey. I am Labor's candidate here in the seat of Griffith. Welcome to the South Brisbane Urgent Care Clinic. It's very exciting to be here, and we've got some fantastic announcements. Urgent Care Clinics are an amazing resource for our community. Here in South Brisbane, since this clinic opened in late 2023, we've had almost 17,000 visits, of local families coming through here, getting high-quality care when things are urgent, but not lifethreatening. I'm very excited to be here today, and I will hand over to the Health Minister, Mark Butler. Thank you.
 
MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE, MARK BUTLER: Thank you, Renee, and thank you, Madonna for joining us. One from south of the river and one from north of the river; apparently, that's how you do things in Brisbane to be ecumenical. This is a really exciting announcement for the people of Queensland. I want to thank Cornwall Street Medical Centre for hosting us here today, allowing us to disrupt your busy Monday morning, and also for taking the decision to put your centre forward as part of our growing Medicare Urgent Care Clinic network. This clinic has already seen almost 17,000 people from the south side and has delivered them fully bulk billed urgent care, 7 days a week, and over extended hours. It's delivering such a great service for this part of Brisbane.
 
We've been focused on strengthening Medicare since we came to came to government, and we really encountered a position where general practice and primary care in particular were under enormous pressure, after a decade of cuts and neglect. Our strengthening Medicare agenda has focused on 3 pillars: more bulk billing, more doctors and more Urgent Care Clinics. A week ago, the Prime Minister and I announced the biggest ever investment in Medicare, with an extension of bulk billing support to every single Australian. That builds on the record investment we made the year before last, to triple the bulk billing incentive for pensioners, children and concession card holders. Here in Queensland, last year alone, that delivered an additional 1.2 million free visits to the GP, and it is already making a meaningful difference. But we know we need to do more, so that's why we invested that very significant amount of money into Medicare, the weekend before last.
 
The weekend just gone, we also made an exciting announcement to expand the existing network of Urgent Care Clinics, which currently numbers 87, by 50 more. If elected, we will go to a network of 137 clinics. This will mean that 4 out of 5 Australians will live within 20 minutes’ drive of a Medicare Urgent Care Clinic, giving them access to high-quality urgent care when they need it, 7 days a week, over extended hours, and fully bulk billed. It's not just great for those patients, or if the patient is a child, for the patient’s and their mum and dad, it's also great for the local hospital systems. We know it's taking pressure off hospitals for those category 4 and category 5 presentations, which are semi-urgent and non-urgent. They need to be seen immediately, but they don't need a fully equipped hospital.
 
I'm delighted to announce there will be 10 new Urgent Care Clinics here in Queensland, which will bring the Queensland number up to 26 if we are elected. One of those will be on the south side, here at Greenslopes, a bit further out from the river, to deal with that large population there that will benefit from urgent care. Another will be in the inner north. Both of these have been strongly campaigned and argued for by Renee and Madonna, respectively. They're fully justified on the basis of our analysis of hospital data, bulk billing data, and in particular, the need to ensure that as many Australians as possible are within a reasonable distance of a Medicare Urgent Care Clinic. I'm delighted to announce this as another element of our strengthening Medicare agenda.
 
A lot of what we've done over the last 3 years is making a really serious difference for Australia. But we know we need to do more, and we can only do that if we have candidates like Renee and Madonna elected at the next election, because we know there's a world of difference between our approach to Medicare and that of the opposition.
 
When I announced 50 Urgent Care Clinics yesterday, the Opposition decided to support only 4 of them, and only 4 of them in target Liberal seats. Importantly, not here in Brisbane. There is a world of difference between our approach to Medicare that focuses on free visits to the GP and new models of care like this one, and the approach of Peter Dutton, whose view has always been that Medicare should be an American-style ‘user pays’ system.
 
DR JOHN ADIE: Hello, I’m John Adie. I'm an urgent care physician and general practitioner. Sixteen years ago, I moved from New Zealand to Australia, and what I noticed there was that if a patient had a non-life threatening urgent condition, where they need to see a doctor now, but it's non-life threatening, if they couldn't see their GP, they went to hospital. This is associated with long wait times, costs and also healthcare associated infections. I was so excited over the last 3 years to see the introduction of the Urgent Care Clinic model to Australia. Last year, I went to the US and met the CEO and President of the Urgent Care Association in America, where they have 15,000 urgent care centres. They have 75 per cent of the population able to drive to an urgent care centre within 10 minutes.
 
I was very excited yesterday to hear that potentially, in Australia, there might be only a 20-minute drive for 80 per cent of the population, to an Urgent Care Clinic. I am very proud to hear this, and excited. I am very happy to work for UQ Health Care and be part of this urgent care centre in central Queensland, offering not only urgent care services, but urgent care centres in a general practice, close to their home in their community. I’m also very excited to be associated with the University of Queensland. We are performing much-needed research in the urgent care space, so that we can deliver an evidence-based service. Thank you.
 
JOURNALIST: Could you just take us through what your day-to-day life is like in an Urgent Care Clinic? What do you have to do?
 
ADIE: The research that we've done on the urgent care centres that we've set up around the country show that more than 50 per cent, 55 per cent is non-life threatening illnesses. These are illnesses that you need to see a doctor for today. Sometimes we will rehydrate people, sometimes we will give them intravenous antibiotics, and sometimes for patients with presentations with asthma and emphysema we might keep them in short stay for a number of hours. About 20 per cent, in the research that we've done for urgent care, is non-life threatening minor injuries. We will suture wounds, we will treat fractures and suspected fractures, minor burns, and dressings. The rest of what we see is predominantly non-differentiated. It's patients coming in where they're not sure what's going on. They need an opinion now, and it's our job to give them an opinion so they don't need to go to an emergency department.
 
It's a very important part of the model, and I'm very happy with this, that we involve a person's general practitioner. We always send a note back to the GP and encourage the patient to see their GP as quickly as they can, because the GP is central to a patient's health journey. That is so important, and it’s why it's so great to have these models in primary care. That's what differentiates us from the English model, where it's an ED, and the US model, where they are predominantly freestanding or in malls or strip malls.
 
BUTLER: Thank you, Dr John.
 
JOURNALIST: Now on those Urgent Care Clinics, about two-thirds of the ones that have been delivered are in Labor seats, and with 50 new ones, they are earmarked for seats that you hope to win. What's your response to accusations of pork barrelling?
 
BUTLER: Well, I think it's a beat up. If you look at the 50 seats I announced yesterday, about half of them are in Labor held seats, and half of them are in non-Labor held seats, which reflects the makeup of the Parliament. The important point though, is that these locations have been chosen according to our analysis of hospital presentations in local hospitals, bulk billing data, and a desire to ensure an even geographical spread. For example, here in Queensland, there will be, if we're elected, 26 Urgent Care Clinics, 21 of which are currently in non-Labor-held seats.
 
JOURNALIST: Well, there is sort of data that the two-thirds of those currently that are being delivered are in Labor seats. Can you explain why more clinics are in those seats?
 
BUTLER: I can. About 15 of the clinics are very small clinics operating in the NT and the ACT. It's quite a different model. Those numbers are used in the analysis you're talking about, and as it happens, there are no Liberal MPs in either of the 2 territories. As well, last year, the New South Wales and Victorian governments, in a separate funding deal that had nothing to do with our Urgent Care Clinic program, handed over the operation of some of their clinics. They decided those locations, it wasn't part of our selection process. If you remove those anomalies, which is almost 30 of the 87, the remaining clinics that have gone through our selection process  have fallen about half Labor, half non-Labor-held seats. Our site selection has nothing to do with the political colour of an electorate. It has everything to do with hospital presentation data, bulk billing data, and that desire to ensure a geographical spread. There is a difference jurisdiction to jurisdiction. NT doesn't have any Liberal held MPs. Yes, all the NT clinics are in Labor-held seats. But as I said, only 5 of the 26 clinics we have planned here for Queensland are in Labor-held seats.
 
JOURNALIST: Now on this expansion of the 50 additional clinics, when will this be expected to be delivered by?
 
BUTLER: The money has already been provisioned in the Mid-Year Budget update that we delivered in December. The money's there if we're elected. It will flow from the 1st of July, and we expect all 50 of those clinics to be able to be stood up in that financial year, from the 1st of July 2025 to the 30th of June 2026. We've got a very good record on standing these up when we have announced them. I said there'd be 50 by the end of 2023, at the last election. We delivered 58 by the end of 2023, and delivered another 29 last year. I'm very confident we can stand these up in time, but that will be over the course of that financial year.
 
JOURNALIST: On private health insurance, just quickly, the increase the Coalition says is the highest increase in 7 years. What's your response to that?
 
BUTLER: Over the course of the last 3 years we've approved an average of 3.2 per cent yearly increases in private health insurance premiums. I know that's really tough for households. Health inflation is running at higher than the general inflation number. That's largely a product of doctor and nurse wages. We have held this as low as we can get. I squeezed the lowest number I possibly could get out of insurers. I went back to them 3 times and told them to submit lower claims. That average of 3.2 per cent compares pretty favourably to the premium increase average under the last government of 4.2 per cent, not 3.2 per cent. And the highest in the last 20 years was delivered by the former Health Minister Peter Dutton at a whopping 6.2 per cent, which he snuck out courageously on Christmas Eve when he was health minister. I'm not going to take lectures from the Liberal Party that delivered a decade of 4.2 per cent increases annually, or from a leader of the opposition who, when he was health minister, delivered a record whopping increase of 6.2 per cent and then froze a private health insurance rebate that left 2 million Australians worse off.
 
JOURNALIST: Minister, a couple of questions from Channel Seven HQ. How do you plan to staff the extra clinics when there's already a critical shortage of GPs?
 
BUTLER: In the 87 clinics operating already, dispersed right across the country, often in areas where it really is hard to get GPs, clinic operators are telling me that they are being very successful in recruiting GPs and nurses. We find GPs and nurses are very keen to work in this model of care. Ultimately, they are looking after people who have to be treated somewhere. This is not discretionary care. When your 14 year old breaks their arm falling off the skateboard, if they're not being cared for in this clinic, they're going to be cared for by a doctor somewhere else. As Dr John said, if that happens on a Saturday afternoon, London to a brick, you are not going to be able to get into your usual GP and have your kid have their arm set. If you're not going to a clinic like this, you're ending up at a hospital, which are already very overcrowded with life threatening emergencies.
 
JOURNALIST: I think you might have covered this one, but what will you do to make it easier for Australians to study medicine?
 
BUTLER: For the first time in probably a decade, we committed last weekend to expand the number of medical school places in our major cities. There has been expansion that we've funded over the last couple of years of medical school places here in regional Queensland, in Mackay and in Cairns, and more recently, announcing a medical school for the first time in Darwin. But medical school places have not expanded for a long time in our major cities, which has constrained the supply of doctors. In our announcement last weekend, we have funded an expansion of medical school places, so we get more medical graduates. Importantly, we have also expanded the number of training places for GPs. It is critical that we expand the number of GPs coming into the system. This year we have more junior doctors training as GPs than Australia has ever had before. But we need more. Those are the green sheets of recovery that I've talked about, but we need even more. So, we've got funding in place from our announcement to train 2,000 GPs every year, and I am committed to us delivering that.
 
JOURNALIST: Will the PM call Trump again, or head to Washington to head off the impending metals tariffs?
 
BUTLER: This is obviously a very important question for our economy and for the US economy. Australia's aluminium and steel exports are obviously important for Australian jobs, but they underpin very well-paying, secure American jobs as well. The Prime Minister has had 2 telephone discussions with President Trump, including about this. On his last occasion of a conversation, President Trump indicated he would be giving great consideration to our case, the case that the Prime Minister made for an exemption. That's also a case that's been made by our Foreign Minister, our Defence Minister, and the very energetic former member for Griffith, who is now the Australian Ambassador to the US, and his staff are also working very hard to make that case. We think it's a compelling case, but we know we need to press that case with American officials.
 
JOURNALIST: Is Australia wanting to be a member of the ‘coalition of the willing’ to help Ukraine?
 
BUTLER:  As the Prime Minister said yesterday again, Australia has been resolute in its support for the courageous resistance by the Ukrainians against the illegal and immoral invasion by Russia more than 3 years ago. We are determined to do everything we reasonably can to support that resistance. As a non-European country, we have made one of the largest contributions outside of Europe and the US to that resistance. The Prime Minister, the Defence Minister, and the Foreign Minister are in regular contact with the Ukrainian leadership, including the President, and we've only over the weekend indicated our determination to continue to do that. Thanks very much.