Minister for Health and Aged Care - press conference - 16 December 2024

Read the transcript for Minister Butler's press conference with Marion Scrymgour, Member for Lingiari on Alice Springs; Medicare Urgent Care Clinics

The Hon Mark Butler MP
Minister for Health and Aged Care

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MARION SCRYMGOUR, MEMBER FOR LINGIARI: It's great to be here and to be joined by the Federal Health Minister, Mark Butler, who has come to Alice Springs a number of times, but more importantly, he’s the Minister that has launched the Urgent Care Clinics. I think that clinics such as this that we have in Mparntwe shows that if you invest in primary health care and in clinics like this, we get good outcomes. It is great to be here with Mark, also with the CEO of the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress, who's an important partner in this process. I'll hand over to Mark and he can go through some of those issues.
 
MARK BUTLER, MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE: Thanks Marion, and I want to thank Donna and Congress for hosting us today. We've just been to see the Health Hub, which was part funded by the Albanese Government, with a commitment of around $10 million, significantly funded through Congress as well, and is going to transform the delivery of healthcare services for Congress. To see that on schedule, due to open in the middle of next year, is really terrific. We had a really valuable, pretty powerful briefing at the emergency department of the Alice Springs hospital, a discussion with the Aboriginal liaison officers and the emergency department doctors there, which Congress was a part of, about ways in which we can consider new models of care to support people presenting particularly with a traumatic brain injury as a result of family and domestic violence. That's been a really powerful issue that Marion Scrymgour has been advocating on behalf of her community in Canberra, as well as here in her own local community.
 
Before I come to the really exciting announcement we have around Urgent Care Clinics for the Northern Territory, I want to address the significant community debate in Alice Springs after a baby was very severely injured and airlifted to Adelaide, where I'm from, to have those injuries, including a brain bleed, treated. This has been a shocking event for the entire Australian community, but particularly shocking for the community here in Alice Springs. It highlights again that the level of violence here is intolerable, and something that no community should accept, whether that's a community in Alice Springs or anywhere else in the country, for that matter. On behalf of the federal government, we are aware of the points that the new Chief Minister has raised over the course of the last couple of days through the media, I understand there's also correspondence that has been sent from the Chief Minister to the Prime Minister about ways in which our government can support the Northern Territory Government do its job in keeping people safe, including in their own homes. We remain committed, as we have been since before the change of government, over the time that we've been in government in Canberra, to doing everything we reasonably can to support the Northern Territory Government, to do that important job of keeping communities safe, keeping people safe, particularly in their own home. There's very substantial investment that has been delivered and is underway over the course of the last couple of years.
 
I've reached out over the last little while to the Chief Minister's office to see whether we are able to have a discussion over the next 24 hours, over the course of this afternoon, this evening or tomorrow morning, if needs be. I'm aware the Chief Minister is traveling to Tennant Creek today, but we're very keen to have a discussion about ways in which we can continue to, as I said, support the Northern Territory Government do its job to keep the community safe here in Alice Springs and more broadly, through Central Australia and elsewhere in the Territory as well. I look forward to being able to have those discussions, if possible, with the Chief Minister.
 
Now I want to get to a really exciting part of the day, and that is the announcement of three additional Urgent Care Clinics in the Northern Territory. For some time since last year, we've had two Urgent Care Clinics operating in the Territory, one in Palmerston, in Darwin, and obviously the clinic we're at today in Alice Springs. They have been a terrific success. Already, 33,000 Territorians have gone through these clinics. They're open seven days a week. They're open to walk in appointments, and importantly, they are fully bulk billed, so no one has had to pay a single dollar for the excellent urgent care that they receive in these clinics. We now have 86 clinics open across the country, including three new remote area Urgent Care Clinics here in the Northern Territory. That will bring the number of remote area Urgent Care Clinics to six in the Territory, and eight altogether, providing a really innovative model of care reflecting the particular needs, but also the supply of workforce that exists in remote Territory communities. I want to thank Congress, particularly, for the investment of time, energy, money that that it has made to deliver this new model of care to Alice Springs. I'm told it's been really well received, seeing a lot of kids who are injured, who have respiratory fevers. Parents are desperately worried and if this clinic was not available, they would be waiting hours and hours and hours to be seen in the emergency department at the Alice Springs hospital. This is a model of care that we're really proud of, and the fact we've been able to partner with an organisation with the depth that they have in their community, and the record of delivery over 50 years in Alice Springs has been a particular issue of pride for us. Thank you to Donna and to the hard-working staff and doctors and nurses who are doing such a terrific job here. The opening of three additional clinics in the territory brings that number to 86, we’ll get to 87 by the end of the year. The election commitment was to get to 50. We vastly outstripped that and more than a million Australians now have been through our Urgent Care Clinic network. It's making a really meaningful difference to healthcare in this country, including here in the centre of Australia.
 
DONNA AH CHEE, CEO OF CONGRESS: Thank you, Minister. I just have to say how successful the Urgent Care Clinic is here in Mparntwe. I'm getting personal text messages from local community people, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, about the quality of the care and the accessibility of the care of this really important service. So to hear today in this announcement that it's being extended to three more remote communities is very pleasing news, Minister. Because at the end of the day, some of these remote communities are, in fact, doing some of this work, and what this does is recognise that work and put the important enhanced resources into those communities to ensure that they're actually enhancing the quality of care that they're providing in their local communities. I just can't underestimate how important this actual service is to the whole community of Alice Springs, and to hear that it's being extended more broadly is just absolutely wonderful.
 
JOURNALIST: Just to clarify, when will these new centres open?
 
BUTLER: They are all open and operating. We made a commitment that all 87 would be open before the end of this year. There's one more to open in Perth, and we're confident that will be open before the end of the calendar year as well. So, over the next few weeks now. It will bring to six the number of remote area clinics in the Territory, as well as the clinic here that Congress is operating and the one in Palmerston.
 
JOURNALIST: Minister, you said you were aware of the Northern Territory Chief Minister's seven requests that had been made to the Federal Government. What are your assessment of those requests? Do you support them? Do you think they're a good idea, things like Centrelink payments to be made on current takeaway alcohol-free days? To reintroduce compulsory worker training programs with fortnightly reporting obligations for Centrelink recipients? What do you make of those requests?
 
BUTLER: I'm not going to conduct a discussion through the media. We are taking the points that the Chief Minister has raised in good faith, and in that vein, I've indicated a willingness, on behalf of government, to talk with her over the course of today, if possible, or tomorrow morning, to start stepping through each of the seven. Obviously, some are more complicated than others. For example, the CASA exemption, on the use of drones by the police here in Alice Springs, is a relatively straightforward matter, which I'm able to confirm will be extended. That point, which is a relatively technical one, I'm able to indicate that that will be extended. Some of the others, though, will require more discussion between the Government and the Chief Minister. Some of them also involve quite significant responsibilities that the Northern Territory Government has in those areas. We'd be wanting to know what the NT government is indicating, or what the Chief Minister is indicating they will do to get to the objectives or the ends that I think we could all agree upon. Thanks everyone.

 

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