Press conference with Minister Butler, Adelaide – 9 January 2026

CLAIRE CLUTTERHAM MP, MEMBER FOR STURT: Good morning everyone, my name is Claire Clutterham, I'm the Member for Sturt in the Federal Parliament, and it's a great pleasure to be here this morning at the Norwood Urgent Care Clinic. And I'm joined by the Federal Health Minister, Mark Butler, and also Dr Max who is operating out of this brand new Urgent Care Clinic.

When I was campaigning for the seat of Sturt, people who live in the electorate were asking me when I'll be getting an Urgent Care Clinic in Adelaide's East and this right here today, is an example of delivery. The Albanese Labor Government has delivered for the people of Sturt with a brand new Urgent Care Clinic, and already, since opening on the 17th of December last year, the clinic has treated close to 450 patients, which is the sign the people of Sturt called for urgent care, and is a great thing that we have delivered for them. I'd like to hand over to Minister Butler to tell us a little bit more about the Urgent Care Clinic and the Albanese Labor Government's investment in strengthening Medicare.
 
MARK BUTLER, MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGEING, MINISTER FOR DISABILITY AND THE NDIS: Thanks so much, Claire. It's terrific to be out at Norwood, Claire's electorate again and to see the benefits, really, of her strong advocacy for a stronger Medicare in Eastern Adelaide. She brought to this campaign a terrific background in health policy as a board member of the Royal Flying Doctors Service, and campaigned very strongly for a range of health improvements, including the Medicare Urgent Care Clinic we've seen opened recently here in Norwood.

This is going to be a really important year again for the Albanese Government delivery on a stronger Medicare. It's only several weeks ago that we delivered the biggest investment in bulk billing in Medicare's history, and already we have seen hundreds and hundreds of clinics across the country move to a fully bulk billing model, and I'm advised that this clinic will become a 100 per cent bulk billing clinic sometime in February.

Since 1 November, the number of GP practices in South Australia that are 100 per cent bulk billing has more than doubled. The number across the country now is 3,200, 1,200 of whom were charging gap fees back in October but are now bulk billing all of their patients all of the time.

Already, we've delivered our latest chapter in cheaper medicines. Right now, if you go to the pharmacist up the road here on The Parade, you'll pay no more than $25 for a PBS script, that's the same price PBS scripts were way back in 2004 more than two decades ago. Already, our cheaper medicines policies have saved Australians almost $2 billion at the pharmacy counter, which is obviously good for their hip pocket, but it also means more people are filling the scripts their doctors are giving them, and that's good for their health.

On 1 January as well, 1800MEDICARE took effect, and already thousands and thousands of Australians have made that call and got free advice 24/7. Around two thirds of those people who say they otherwise would have gone to the hospital have been safely diverted from attending an ED. Hundreds of them have also availed themselves of the free GP telehealth service that is attached to that program after 6pm overnight and on the weekends, hundreds of them. And three in four of those people, have again been safely diverted from the ED.

This year as well, we'll be delivering even more doctors. A record number of junior doctors this year are intending to train as GPs. Last year was a record. The year before was a record in terms of GP training. This year, we'll break both of those records, delivering more Australian trained GPs into our Medicare system.

But we're here today to celebrate the opening of the Norwood Medicare Urgent Care Clinic, we've now got 117 Urgent Care Clinics operating across the country. Another 20 will open over coming weeks, bringing the number up to 137 over a course of a year. This network will see more than two million patients every single year, the vast bulk of whom say that they otherwise would have had to go to a hospital ED. They're open seven days a week, extended hours, and importantly, they are fully bulk billed, so all you need to bring is your Medicare card.

This clinic has already seen hundreds of people from Eastern Adelaide giving people access to high quality urgent care in their own community, but also meaning they don't have to go up and line up sometimes for hours and hours at a busy emergency department. I want to thank the staff and the doctors here at Norwood Medicare Urgent Care Clinic. I want to thank Claire for her strong advocacy for an Urgent Care Clinic in her community, and for her delivery of that promise.

I'm going to hand over to Dr Max, who has been working in urgent care since we started rolling out this program a couple of years ago to talk a bit about the experience here for doctors and staff, but also for patients.
 
DR MAX ADAMS: Thank you local member. Thank you Minister. My name is Max Adams. I'm a local GP, and proudly an urgent care doctor as well. I've been working in this field for over five years, mostly at the Marion priority care centre, a very similar service with some state support, as well as the Marion Medicare Urgent Care Clinic, and now also very proudly and excitedly here at the Norwood Medicare Urgent Care Clinic.

We've been open for a few weeks, and we've already seen about 40 patients a day. Our service has been open for about 10 hours every day during those few weeks. We're going to expand to 14 hours, which is really great, because it means it's going to be very accessible service for the local community, we have everything set up. Credit to the local organisation ForHealth who are running this service. They've got a lot of experience from the last few years of running a number of Urgent Care Clinics across Australia.

We knew as an organisation what we needed, and we've taken from a lot of those other sites, our learnings, and it's just meant that it's been really a very seamless start to this service. We're fortunate that the location makes good sense, because it's in the heart of this community and it's also in a service that is already well established. The local community knows the Norwood Village Medical Centre, and they know how to get here. They know what it is.

We're also fortunate that we've got on site radiology, Lumus Imaging, ready to go as well. It's made it a very seamless transition. It's exciting to see the local community come in over Christmas, New Year's already finding out about us. It seems like urgent care, the word has got out.

Now, I presume, across Australia, not just in Adelaide and South Australia, people know that they've now got three points of access for seeking medical care. They've got the traditional and the most important, in my opinion, general practice, has the majority of the access point for them for anything that's chronic complex, because that's what GPs do. That's the kind of treatment they can provide. And then they've got now Urgent Care Clinics that they can access for urgent, non-life threatening emergency, sort of conditions that might be infections, might be injuries, particularly in the context of perhaps their local GP not being around or not being able to service them quickly enough, just because sometimes GPs are booked out.

Then, of course, the third place which people still shouldn't neglect to go to if they need to. That's the government emergency departments, to attend them for life-threatening conditions or anything people may be concerned could be a life-threatening thing. It's really fantastic now that in Australia, there are three accessible, government funded services for people to access, depending on acuity.

I think that what we're seeing with urgent care, as was provided with some of the numbers, Minister Butler provided, 40 patients a day already here at Norwood, which is huge considering we've only just started, and we're only doing 10 hours a day. At other sites, the numbers are at least the same as that, but that is actually really taking the pressure off our emergency departments.

One other thing I love about urgent care, the way the government's brought it out, speaking sort of experientially and anecdotally, is that because urgent care has been set up in local communities, pockets throughout cities, pockets throughout the country, it means that we are able to service people in their local catchment area, and that's great for patients. It's great for accessibility, and the fact that it's government supported is great because it means that it's affordable for people as well.

It's also fantastic because being based in primary care, and with GPs being the clinicians caring for the patients in these services, we know the local community. We often know the local GP clinics, and we often, some of us, most of us, also work at local GP clinics,  we integrate it into the system. It does seem to be working really well, speaking from sort of ground level kind of experience. Thank you very much for opening yet another really exciting urgent care service.
 
JOURNALIST: You mentioned 20 more clinics were set to roll out. One is in SA will be in Whyalla. Are there any others planned?
 
BUTLER: We had three that we committed to at the last election, this one in Eastern Adelaide, Victor Harbour has recently opened, and Whyalla will be opening in coming weeks, probably in March. We also have to deal with a closure in Mount Gambier, which had been one of our first Medicare Urgent Care Clinics, and that has only reopened again this week, with a new operator as well.

We've seen about 140,000 South Australians have gone through a Medicare Urgent Care Clinic since we started the program in 2023 that number will increase, obviously because of these new clinics opening. Clinics that were committed last election.
 
JOURNALIST: How many of those have opened?
 
BUTLER: So 30 have opened already as of today, and the other 20 will open over coming weeks. I committed that they will open by the 30th of June, we'll be well ahead of that date. I expect all of them to be open, unless there is a contractual issue, all of them to be open over the coming weeks.
 
JOURNALIST: So apart from Mount Gambier and Whyalla, are any others –
 
BUTLER: And Victor Harbour.
 
JOURNALIST: Any others planned for South Australia?
 
BUTLER: No, that's the full South Australian contingent. But that is the 137 once we get Whyalla open and the other remaining clinics in other jurisdictions. That will be 137 clinics across the country. As I said, when it's up and running, we see two million Australians every year, and four in five Australians will live within a 20 minute drive of a Medicare Urgent Care Clinic.
 
JOURNALIST: So just on Sunday just gone, the northern suburbs Urgent Care Clinic had to turn patients away because they were at capacity. Does that not highlight a need for more Urgent Care Clinics?
 
BUTLER: Max might want to say something about this. We were just talking earlier, though, about what we know happens over the Christmas, New Year period. General practice often shuts down or reduces their service. People aren't at work with access sometimes to medical services. Kids aren't at school, so there is always very significant pressure on those remaining health services that are open over that Christmas, New Year period. Traditionally, that's been hospital emergency departments that get overwhelmed, frankly, during Christmas period, because often they are the only health service that has been open. But now we have all of these Urgent Care Clinics, and I do recognise they come under a lot of pressure over the holiday season, when so many other health services are also taking holidays.
 
JOURNALIST: So you're convinced that we don't need any more Urgent Care Clinics in SA this will be enough?
 
BUTLER: We've only got 137, there are 15,000 Urgent Care Clinics in the United States. Even adjusting for population, I say that this is a new model. Dr Max reflected this. This was a new model we took to the 2022 election and have been billing out ever since.

I would like to see more Medicare Urgent Care Clinics over time, but we're doing this in a series of tranches that ensures that we get it right. We had an issue down in Mount Gambier, there might have been one or two other issues across the country, but by and large we have got it right. We're going through a proper tender process. We've been able to build out this system relatively quickly, ensure it has access to workforce, which has also been very successful, and ensure that the community understands what is the sort of condition you'd go to an Urgent Care Clinic for and what you do need to go to a hospital emergency department for as well.

Can I say how important it has been for these clinics to develop good protocols and relationships with local hospital services and with local ambulance services, and that has been a real feature of this build out, not just in South Australia, but across the country. I think doing it in tranches is the right thing to do.

There's an evaluation of this program that is still underway, because it is new. It's a significant expenditure of taxpayer dollars, so it's right that it be properly evaluated, and we're looking at that over time as well. But I think this has undoubtedly been a successful initiative. It's great for patients and it's great for hospital systems, and I'd like to see it expand over time. At the moment, we're focused on delivering the commitments we made less than 12 months ago.
 
JOURNALIST: Are you pleased that the Prime Minister has pulled a Royal Commission into the Bondi terror attack?
 
BUTLER:  As I've said this morning on a number of occasions in media interviews, this is a really important part of our comprehensive response, not just to the worst terror attack on Australian soil that took place on the 14th of December, but also to what we know is a scourge of antisemitism that was certainly there before the 7th of October 2023, but has undoubtedly risen at alarming rates since that time. I think this will be a really important part of that response.

Obviously, in the 25 or so days since that terror attack, we've been focused very much on the more urgent and immediate work to strengthen our hate speech laws, to strengthen some of the powers we need around gun ownership, around terror organisations, around visa applicants and the like, also accelerating the work of the Antisemitism Special Envoy. But the point the Prime Minister made yesterday, and I've made a number of times this morning, is this is a government that listens, and he’s a Prime Minister that listens. He's listened to the voices of the families of victims of that terror attack, of local rabbis, of other members of the community, who said there should be a Commonwealth led Royal Commission, rather than a New South Wales led Royal Commission. And we've come to  a really outstanding position, and that will be a really important part of this year.
 
JOURNALIST: when did the Prime Minister change his mind on the Royal Commission? And was there a particular group or person that changed his mind?
 
BUTLER: The Prime Minister's answered that question slightly less than 24 hours, he spoke to a range of people doing it right through this period. He wasn't doing it with cameras. They weren't organised as media events. They were quiet, sombre, often tearful discussions in living rooms with families of victims. There were discussions with local rabbis who were caring for their local communities, and obviously they were with a range of other community leaders, particularly the Jewish community, but also business leaders, health community leaders and a range of others who were really arguing the case for a Commonwealth led Royal Commission. This has been a process that has gone on through this period of time, over the summer period since that awful terror attack.

But I say a lot of energy has been going into that urgent and immediate work that we want to bring before the Parliament as soon as we possibly can. You just have to recognise that over the years, governments of different political persuasions have tried to put in place laws that would put these hate preachers and the organisations that employ them out of business. But those laws haven't worked in the way that I think parliaments and governments have intended. We need to get these laws right. That's been very much the focus of the work of relevant ministers and officials who've been working day in day out since the 14th of December. But of course, through that time, the Prime Minister has been talking to people and listening to people.
 
JOURNALIST: Some people are saying that this has taken way too long. Do you accept that?
 
BUTLER: It's still less than four weeks since that awful terror attack, and the government officials and ministers have been working tirelessly to put together a comprehensive response. I've talked about many of those elements, but also talking with the New South Wales Government that had indicated its intention to hold a Royal Commission. I don't think anyone thought it was sustainable to have two Royal Commissions. It  was important to have a discussion with the jurisdiction in which this terror attack took place, but also for those range of people I've talked about, and the Prime Minister did that.

He's a Prime Minister who listens, and this is a government who listens. We're still less than four weeks on from this, I think we now have a comprehensive response in place. Parliament needs to come back consider those laws. The Royal Commissioner nominated by the government, Virginia Bell obviously needs to start to put in place the arrangements for the Royal Commission. Dennis Richardson, who will be feeding into the security related aspects of the Royal Commission, particularly to ground that interim report in April. He needs to start that work. There's a lot of things happening, and I think we've now got in place a comprehensive response.
 
JOURNALIST: Is the government happy with the current level of international students? Would you like to see it fall further?
 
BUTLER: We've been quite determined to bring the overall rate of migration down to a level that really balances the different interests that we have as an economy and as a society. We are a nation of migrants. We're an economy that very much is enriched by the work of migrants. I can tell you, as the Health Minister, it would be very, very difficult, if not impossible, to operate aged care facilities many of our disability services, general practices, particularly in rural areas, without skilled migration and other forms of migration as well. These are a question of balance, and over the last little while, we've got that rate of migration down by about 40 per cent.

We've particularly put in place arrangements to control the number of international students, which I think is the question you raised again. We need to balance the fact that this is an important export sector for particularly the southern states, including South Australia. We need to ensure that those numbers reflect the needs of the new amalgamated university, and I know Premier Malinauskas has been a very strong advocate about that, from a South Australian perspective generally, but also to make sure the uni merger is a success. We're getting that balance right. We've got those numbers down by 40 per cent but obviously that's something that we continue to monitor very Closely.
 
JOURNALIST: On the heat, has there been a rise in hospital presentations around the country from people suffering heat stress?
 
BUTLER: Look, we're still monitoring that. State governments don't generally report those issues into us in in real time. Obviously, there are reports about that there have been in South Australia. Here in Adelaide, fortunately, we're seeing a bit of relief today, but I see in Renmark, it's already over 40 degrees. In the Riverland, it's expected to get as high as 47C. There certainly are parts of our state that are at real risk of the effects of extreme heat. We know the lessons here in Australia, because this is a hot country. Stay hydrated, stay inside, look out, particularly for people who are vulnerable, particularly the elderly, not just your relatives, but neighbours as well. And health systems do come under stress, obviously, also there's a lot of stress and risk associated with fire. And I know as the heat moves across the eastern states and stays in some parts of South Australia, our fire service is watching this very, very closely as well.
 
JOURNALIST: On another matter, will you accept the PBAC advice for expanding GLP-1 drug access on the PBS for obese patients?
 
BUTLER: I received a recommendation from the Advisory Committee for the PBS just before Christmas to list Wegovy, which is one of the GLP-1s, and list that for patients with a particular level of obesity, a BMI of 35 or above with established cardiovascular disease. We have a very clear policy as a government that we will list all recommendations by the PBAC, but we now have to move to a process of negotiating the price with that company, Novo Nordisk, which is also the company that manufactures Ozempic. We only received the recommendation just before Christmas. We'll start that process very quickly with the company. This is a pretty extraordinary class of drugs, the GLP-1s, not just for weight loss, but a range of other benefits as well.

I think governments across the world, including ours, are going through a process of working out how we can make sure that patients, in an equitable way get access to those benefits. Right now, more than 400,000 Australians are paying market prices for one of the GLP-1s, and that is as much as $4,000 or $5,000 a year, which is obviously beyond the means of many Australians. This is not just a health issue for us. It's also an equity issue, which I'll ask for some advice from the advisory committee about in the process of getting that as well.

So yes, we'll list it. That's our commitment. Every recommendation from the PBAC that we have received has been listed by this government. There is a further process, though, after the recommendation is received, and that's a process to get the right price. This is going to be a very big bill for taxpayers, so it's incumbent on us as the government to negotiate a good price, from the perspective of taxpayers on that.
 
JOURNALIST: Dr Max, is it ever acceptable to you to have to turn away patients?
 
DR ADAMS: Yes, yes, it is acceptable, but it's contextual. It depends on why the patient's presented. And urgent care is a new space, and we are, the Medicare Urgent Care model is based on confidence that the general public understand when it's best to present to urgent care versus to a general practitioner or an emergency department. So you might want to sort of define what you mean by turn away, but because there are lots of different ways if you're at capacity.
 
JOURNALIST: To be turning patients away from an urgent care, if it's ever acceptable?
 
DR ADAMS: I still think it's acceptable, no matter how hard you, organisations, governments try there are going to be moments where there are more patients than the service can provide for. That's just part of health care, and it's a challenging part sometimes. Being a doctor, being a nurse, even being the front of the service, as a receptionist, admin officer, it's challenging, because you know you want to help everybody, your heart's there, but you just sometimes can't. Sometimes it would be a disservice for the patient to actually make them wait for prolonged periods of time.

I can't speak for all Urgent Care Clinics across Australia, but I can speak for the ForHealth Network, which has a very large portfolio of Urgent Care Clinics across Australia, part of their clinical governance and part of what has been established is a scripting model for the doctors, nurses and reception staff to assist them in managing when we do need to identify that we're at capacity, we need to try to find alternatives for some of the patients. That scripting without going into the minutiae to do with identifying which patients are safest to locate to a new location, and also which kind of location would be best for them. It does involve contacting other services and also helping people in various ways to get to those services. It's a time consuming process, though, and actually, in some ways, it's almost can be sometimes more time consuming than just seeing those patients. But when you don't know in the heat of the moment how long each patient consult is going to take you, you really do need to pull out those strategies for trying to redirect certain people. I've already forgot which phrase you used, I think it was ‘redirect’ wasn't it?
 
JOURNALIST: Because in this instance, it was the northern suburbs Urgent Care Clinic at 4:30pm on a Sunday afternoon at capacity, turning people away from the service. I mean, where are they supposed to go? Obviously, GP clinics are closed. Go sit in the emergency department?
 
DR ADAMS: Yes, the simple answer is, there's no one answer, because some people would potentially be best off possibly waiting and seeing a GP or another service the next day, or coming back to the Urgent Care Clinic the next day, which sounds a little bit of a  contradiction, come back the next day to urgent care. But some things can wait 24 hours once it's been triaged initially. Other people are absolutely best off going to the emergency department, not because their waits can be any shorter, but because if they do start deteriorating while waiting, that's a much better place to be for two reasons. One, obviously, emergency departments have got all those additional infrastructure and the services to deal with someone who's deteriorating. But more importantly, because they're open 24/7. With Urgent Care Clinics, and this is an important thing for the general public to understand, they close, and that is also one of the reasons we need while we're open, to anticipate how many patients we can manage before closure. Different clinics close at different times. Norwood will be closing currently at 8pm, but it will be 10pm. Some of the others, they're closed at 8pm.
 
JOURNALIST: Have you ever been at capacity at Marion? You said you've worked there.
 
DR ADAMS: Particularly, as the Minister mentioned, this time of year is really tricky. There are just more people seeking urgent care for a variety of reasons, partly recreational activities people are doing, from fishing to playing sports and stuff like that. But also mostly because there are fewer health services that are open, fewer health professionals that are working. Those who are continuing to work, we then obviously have to absorb more patients. Marion had the same issues as Norwood, in fact, as well as Royal Park and Elizabeth. They're the four that I know about because they're all within the same Forhealth organisation. Of course, each one on different days and at different moments of those days would have been stressed in different ways. But the short answer is yes, Marion had those same issues.
 
JOURNALIST: On how many occasions would you be at capacity, at Marion, off the top of your head?
 
DR ADAMS: So at capacity would be defined as? Because there's sort of having to turn patients away, there'd be probably one to two times on average per shift, where we're suggesting to patients, there might be an alternative for you that would mean you'd be able to get seen quicker. I wonder whether the way you're asking that means more, like we're at red zone?
 
JOURNALIST: Red zone capacity. You’ve got a sign out the front, you’re at capacity.
 
DR ADAMS: I don't know the numbers, but anecdotally, and I'll just reiterate, I mostly work at Marion, I would say once a month, maybe this time of year, if it was Christmas through New Year's all the time, probably I'd be saying once a week.
 
JOURNALIST: So Minister, does that not highlight perhaps a need for more Urgent Care Clinics? With that, you know, once a week, once a month?
 
DR ADAMS: Do you mind if I just respond to this? I'm not trying to imply that, because I think it's important to understand that it's really difficult to anticipate the demand on service. I would sort of feel that it will be challenging to open up a whole lot of Urgent Care Clinics, only to compensate for a two week period and over a 52 week year, referring to Christmas, New Year. It could be a good idea to have those services expanded a little bit with additional staffing during those busy times. We're still learning about what those times are. And the other thing to consider there is that it's not always about the government or the funding, sometimes it's actually about the staffing from a sort of grassroots level. Can you find doctors who are willing to work during that period of time, even if you're putting a lot of money and funding into it. Equally, can you find the nursing staff that are willing to work during that time. There are additional factors. I just wanted to explain that.
 
BUTLER: I answered that question earlier. I'd like to see more Urgent Care Clinics, not particularly just in South Australia, but across the country. Obviously, that's a big budget commitment, and we're doing this in tranches. I also made the point that we are evaluating still what is a very new program for this country. It's pretty well established in other countries that we'll often compare ourselves to. It’s been operating for many, many years in New Zealand, for example. But some of these questions about hours and whether you do some surge capacity funding and things like that, are things we're learning. This is only really the third year of the program, and we're only really now getting to a build out of the network that I think is truly national.

There are some clinics we have provided additional funding because they happen to be busier than some others. This is something that's been informed by feedback from the operators, but also by the ongoing evaluation of the program. I'd also make the point that we're trying to build out a range of other opportunities for people to get urgent health advice. I talked about 1800MEDICARE that kicked off on the first of January, that has a telehealth service associated with it, particularly after hours and on the weekends, when people might not be able to get to their usual GP. Again, for many conditions, obviously not a fracture and things like that, but for many conditions, often that telehealth service is able to provide people with at least some peace of mind before they can actually get to see a face to face appointment. Whether it's because of the supply of doctors or spikes in demand that happen in holiday periods and over winter and things like that, all health services, whether it's GP practices, urgent care or hospitals, experience periods of pressure, and I know all governments are working to minimise that.
 
JOURNALIST: Another issue, can I get your thoughts on the Adelaide Writers’ Week board decision to cancel featuring a Palestinian Australian author?
 
BUTLER: This is obviously a state issue and a decision of the board of the Adelaide Festival. I've heard the Premier, happened to hear the Premier on radio this morning expressing his view and the state government's view, given they are a significant funder of the Adelaide Festival, I don't have anything to add to what the Premier said this morning.
 
JOURNALIST: Do you support the decision?
 
BUTLER: It's not a matter for the federal government. It's a matter for the Adelaide Festival board, the state government, as the major sponsor and supporter of the Adelaide Festival over many decades, has indicated its view, which is appropriate, as the major sponsor and stakeholder of this festival. That's not the position of the Commonwealth Government. We are not the major stakeholder of this state based festival, the festival as a South Australian that I know is a really important part of our community, but the Commonwealth Government takes the view this is the matter for the Adelaide Festival. Thanks.