Radio interview with Minister Butler, 4BC Brisbane – 3 March 2025

PETER FEGAN, HOST: Joining me on the line is the federal Health Minister, Mark Butler. Minister, always great to have your company.
 
MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE, MARK BUTLER: Thanks for having me.
 
FEGAN: So, let's be very clear, are these clinics part of the government's $8.5 billion Medicare splurge, or is the funding separate?
 
BUTLER: No, it's separate. The funding was provisioned in the mid-year Budget update that we published in December and builds on the 87 Medicare Urgent Care Clinics that we've delivered through this term. It was a promise I made at the last election to deliver 50 and we've delivered 87. The promise we made yesterday would take the total network up to almost 140 clinics across the country and would mean that 4 in 5 Australians live within a 20-minute drive of a Medicare Urgent Care Clinic. Great for their options, but also, importantly, taking pressure off our crowded emergency departments.
 
FEGAN: We're getting 10 Minister here in Queensland, have we pegged out exactly the locations of where they're going to go?
 
BUTLER: We have broadly. I had my Department look at hospital data – where are our busiest hospital emergency departments, particularly EDs that are receiving what they call semi-urgent or non-urgent presentations. They're things that need to be seen immediately, like when your kid breaks their arm falling off a skateboard, but they're not a life-threatening emergency like a heart attack. We look at that primarily. We look at bulk billing data. So, areas where people don't have good access to bulk billing. And as I said, I was keen to make sure as many people as possible are within a reasonable driving distance. So, we looked at that geographical spread as well. We've pinpointed 10 locations in Queensland that ticked those boxes. But the precise service, the location of the precise service will go through an independent commissioning process, which Primary Health Networks conduct at arm's length from the government. That's what's happened with the first ones that I announced in the 2022 election. They're working terrifically well, getting great feedback from patients and from doctors and nurses working in them.
 
FEGAN: How many have we seen built since 2022?
 
BUTLER:  87 of them. That includes a number of very small clinics that operate on a different basis in remote Northern Territory and a slightly different model in the ACT. But in the big states several dozen of them have already seen 1.2 million patients. They're open 7 days a week, as you said in your intro, walk in, so extended hours as well. And importantly, they're fully bulk billed, so all you need to do is take your Medicare card. They have to have good ready access to X-ray services, obviously important for breaks and fractures and also pathology. They're a really terrific service. It's a very common model in pretty much every country we compare ourselves to. It had been a missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle here in Australia for a long time.
 
FEGAN: The Royal Australian College of GPs President Michael Wright, I found this interesting reading about this on the weekend, and look I'm a big supporter of these. I think they work really well. We've seen it with the satellite hospitals here in Queensland. There was a bit of confusion of course over the names and I think people need to realise these aren't hospitals, they are for minor ailments as mentioned. But I found this interesting, and this was Michael Wright, he's questioned if this will improve patient care and he's saying should we not just build hospitals? And it got me thinking, it's a pretty fair point, Minister, because look, you've got 10 health care centres that you're going to build. Could we not be better spending money and perhaps just building a larger hospital here in Brisbane?
 
BUTLER: The point is, when we talk to many of the people, the 1.2 million who've gone through, they don't want to go to hospital. They want their kid cared for, a third of the patients going through these clinics are kids under the age of 15. Obviously, they want their child who's injured their arm at Saturday afternoon footy or fallen off a skateboard attended to quickly and effectively, but they don't particularly want to spend hours waiting in an ED, which is why they've been so positive about this model. So, we don't want to build more hospitals for semi-urgent non-urgent presentations. No other country really does that. They have this type of model. The other point I make is we're not building Urgent Care Clinics in the sense of laying a concrete slab and building a new building. What we're doing in a particular region is putting out a call for general practices who want to take their practice to the next level. They would they receive additional funding from the Commonwealth if they're willing to open 7 days a week, extended hours, have those X-ray and pathology facilities available, and probably end up employing doctors and nurses who have a bit of background in emergency medicine.
 
FEGAN: That leads me to my next question, Minister. I mean, hospitals that we have here already, the RBWH one of the biggest hospitals in the country, the Ipswich Hospital struggling, Redland hospital is struggling. The list goes on. Where are we going to find the nurses and doctors to fill this? I mean, you just mentioned that you would like to see GPs take their clinics to the next level, but if they don't, we are up the creek without the paddle?
 
BUTLER: Yeah, we don't have enough doctors. I think that that's clear, which is why last week's announcement that we made to expand medical schools, and particularly to increase the number of young doctors training as GPs is so important. We need more doctors.
 
FEGAN: Well, they need to pay them more, give them more incentive. The unfortunate thing the reality is, Minister, and it falls on the states as well, why would you be a nurse? There's no money in it. They're overworked and they're being assaulted. Doctors are the same. I mean, they're calling us every week on this program to tell us about how hard it is. Ipswich Hospital nurses are paying for parking, and they've been told to park nearly a kilometre away from the hospital. I mean, we've got to look after them. Otherwise, they don't want to be nurses and doctors anymore?
 
BUTLER: Totally, we have the best trained health workforce on the planet. They are just terrific. They've taken us through a once in a century.
 
FEGAN: But the most poorly paid, you know?
 
BUTLER: They work 24/7, 7 days a week, pretty gruelling shifts, dealing with some really difficult cases. We can never be too grateful for the work that they do. But you talk about the Ipswich Hospital. I've seen that the presentation data for that hospital, because we've got a Medicare Urgent Care Clinic out there and those semi-urgent non-urgent presentations, they've dropped off dramatically since we had that clinic open, because people aren't going in there if their kid breaks their arm and waiting eight hours on a Saturday afternoon into the evening. They're going to the Medicare Urgent Care Clinic, being seen relatively quickly, highly, effectively, completely free of charge, and leaving those hospital EDs to deal with the life threatening emergencies, which is what they're built for.
 
FEGAN: I think if you spoke to any orderly or any nurse or any doctor at Ipswich Hospital right now, they'd tell you a different story. Minister, I know you've probably received it on paper, but unfortunately these days paperwork looks a lot different to reality. Look, these are a good thing. I'm backing them.
 
BUTLER: I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that every hospital in Australia is not flat-out busy. What I'm saying is we're trying to take a little bit of the pressure off at the lower end of, acuity or severity so that those hard-working doctors and nurses can really focus on the very serious cases that are coming through their front door. The hospital system across the country is under enormous pressure.
 
FEGAN: Yeah, why doesn't the federal government, this is just hypothetically speaking, and I'm not telling you how to do your job or telling the government how to suck eggs, but from a voter’s point of view, why don't you have some incentive for nurses and doctors? Right, instead, let's start holding these universities to account for starters. I mean, they're getting away with murder. But why don't we say why doesn't the federal government pledge a little bit of that $ 8.5 billion, perhaps a billion of it into the university sector, right. And say to a nurse or a young doctor, hey, if you sign up and you stay here and you're going to become a doctor and a nurse, we'll pay for your final year of university. I mean, they'd be coming out of this. There's no incentive?
 
BUTLER: We passed some laws, through the parliament last year, maybe the year before, particularly trying to provide an incentive for doctors working outside of our major cities, doctors and nurse practitioners. We said, if you spend a few years working outside of Brisbane or Sydney or Melbourne in the bush, we will pay your university fees. We'll wipe your student debt. You'll remember the old days where,  teacher graduates would have to spend some time outside. Providing some incentive, particularly for hard-working health professionals, to get out bush and spend some years there is really important so that we don't just rely on overseas trained doctors in country Australia. So, we've tried that. It's already working really well. The announcement we did make last weekend, was to provide additional incentives for junior doctors to train as GPs. If a medical graduate goes into the hospital system and trains, for example, as a surgeon for the next 5 years, they'll earn a lot more money than the junior doctor who was at medical school sitting next to them, who goes off and trains as a GP. So, we've announced last weekend we'll pay the salary gap, which is about 30,000 a year. We'll provide that as an additional incentive to the GP trainee, so that they're not financially worse off than the person who sat next to them at medical school who's off training as a surgeon. We are thinking through this. We do need to build the health workforce. The population is getting bigger, but it's also getting older and it's getting sicker in the sense there's more complex chronic disease around which all of your listeners will know. There’s more diabetes – so we do need more health workers. We don't just need to build more hospitals. We need to think a bit more creatively about the system. And that's what this Urgent Care Clinic model is about. It is a new model of care. It's working terrifically well. And I want to see it grow. I want to see more Australians able to access a Urgent Care Clinic 7 days a week. Fully bulk billed.
 
FEGAN: Minister, before I let you go, I've got a text message here from Jim Chalmers, who's just text through to 4BC. He said, tell the Minister it's okay to let everyone know when the election is. He said he's given the green light. Anything.
 
BUTLER: Mate, if I knew, I might even be tempted.
 
FEGAN: Well, you're telling me the boss hasn't even told you?
 
BUTLER: No, I know it's somewhere between the next six and 12 weeks.
 
FEGAN: Good on you, Minister.
 
BUTLER: Pencil that in and every Saturday between then.
 
FEGAN: Good on you, Minister. Always great to have your time.
 
BUTLER: Good to talk to you. See you mate.