Press conference with Minister Butler, Burnie – 8 July 2026

ANNE URQUHART, FEDERAL MEMBER FOR BRADDON: Hi. I'm Anne Urquhart, Federal Member for Braddon, and it's lovely to be here at the Burnie Urgent Care Clinic with Mark Butler, our Minister for Health, Aged Care and the NDIS. It's great to have Mark in Burnie and in the northwest for yesterday and today. We've been busy right along the coast, talking both aged care but also around urgent care and the changes that the implementation of the Medicare enhancements that the Government's provided over the last couple of years and what that's done to this community. It's amazing. And Jerome Muir Wilson, who is one of the GPs who is instrumental in getting this facility up and running here at the Burnie Health Hub.
 
This is a fantastic facility that was the old university building as many people around Burnie would know, which has now been absolutely transformed out of a university building a few years ago which sat idle for, I think, five to six years, has been remodelled into this fantastic community health hub known as the Burnie Health Hub, which will at the end of its construction life will encompass a whole range of services that are complimentary to one another right across the health spectrum right in one great facility.
 
So I'll hand over to Mark.
 
MARK BUTLER, MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGEING, MINISTER FOR DISABILITY AND THE NDIS: Thank you, Anne, and thank you, Jerome, and partners for having us here. This has changed quite a lot since Anne hosted the Prime Minister and me here a little over 12 months ago when we made that commitment that Anne had been calling for of $8.5 million to help with the development of this extraordinary facility. It really has been terrific to be in the north over the last few days. This is the third Urgent Care Clinic that I've visited since coming to Tasmania. We visited the Launceston Urgent Care Clinic yesterday morning, which is about the busiest Urgent Care Clinic in the country. We were at Devonport yesterday afternoon. I was there with Anne. And this newest of the Urgent Care Clinics in the north, here at Burnie, that's already seen 5000 patients. They're delivering really high-quality urgent care to people who need to be seen urgently but don't have a life-threatening emergency that would require them to go to hospital. High-quality care, pretty quick, and completely free of charge because they are all fully bulk billed services.
 
This is really a centrepiece of the agenda that Anne and I and the rest of the Government had to deliver a stronger Medicare. We wanted to deliver more doctors, and it's been great to get through this part of Tasmania with Anne and find that we've really made significant advances from where we were a few years ago. The stories in this part of Tasmania a few years ago were about fewer doctors and practices closing down, and we're seeing doctors return to this part of Tasmania in greater numbers than ever.
 
We're also seeing much higher bulk billing rates. This part of Tasmania, the electorate of Braddon that Anne represents now has a bulk billing rate of well over 90 per cent, at about 93 per cent, and that's because of the investments we made. Over the last several months in particular, bulk billing for people who don't have a concession card has increased by 25 per cent in just four months. That's an extraordinary increase in bulk billing. And what it means is that people can go to the doctor when they feel they need to rather than when they feel they can afford a gap fee. We've got these Urgent Care Clinics, which was the third pillar of our stronger Medicare policies. And Anne and I have also been talking to pharmacists about the benefits of our cheaper medicines policies that mean that people are going to the pharmacy counter and paying, if they're general patients, about half what they would have paid if we'd not cut the price of PBS scripts.
 
We're seeing a real difference being made here. It doesn't mean there's not more to do. Anne's impatient for us to do more in this part of Tasmania. But these changes to Medicare and to the medicines policies are making a real difference for people in the northwest.
 
Happy to hand over to Jerome, who's been such an innovator, a real driver with his partners in some of these new models of care that are making a real difference across the north.
 
JEROME MUIR WILSON, GP: Thanks, Mark. Welcome to Burnie Urgent Care, which is looking after the Burnie community and the whole wider northwest. So, we've had patients travel from far out places down the West Coast to access care and within the local community.
 
As the Minister mentioned, we've seen 5000 people in the first four months and around half of those would have gone to the emergency department. So, we've seen a real difference, especially on weekends, where we take pressure off the emergency department. Kids at weekend sport, kids in the middle of the night that get sick, they can turn up and be seen and well treated and kept out of hospital. It's been outstanding feedback around the community that Urgent Cares provide, and we've been able to build capacity in the region by attracting new doctors to the region and training more within the northwest. So, thanks very much.
 
BUTLER: Any questions?
 
JOURNALIST: Yes. Might start with Urgent Care Clinics. You mentioned a couple times that the Launceston Clinic is one of the busiest, if not the busiest, in the country. Might be a random one, but is that a good thing necessarily? Like, what does that actually tell you? Is that that there's a lack of services in the north in general that's contributing to that? Perhaps a lack of health literacy, I'm not sure. But what do you put that figure down to? And is it a good thing?
 
BUTLER: I might ask Jerome to add to this, but it is one of the first clinics that we opened. It's got real capacity there. If you go to the clinic, it's got a lot more treatment bays, and some of the staffing arrangements that Jerome has put in place are frankly bigger than we will see in many of the clinics on the mainland. And it's been very well publicised. I think it's well known in the community in Launceston and in the surrounding areas. It's got a very high reputation, which means that when people do feel that they need to be seen urgently but don't necessarily have to go to a fully equipped emergency department, there's a really high level of confidence in that community that they'll receive terrific care at the Launceston Urgent Care Clinic completely free of charge. And we're starting to see in some of the newer clinics, Devonport and now here in Burnie, that same high reputation develop very quickly in the local community. But I'll ask Jerome if he's got some insights in that.
 
WILSON: Yeah. So I think, as Mark said, word of mouth for urgent care is a huge thing and trust. By being one of the first that have opened and being in a location like we are here in Burnie close to the hospital, in Launceston, we’re close to a hospital, and people will know that the hospital waiting rooms are getting fuller and fuller. And so, when you don't need to get admitted to hospital, you don't have a life-threatening condition, these are a great model of care. You have great flow through these Urgent Cares. So they're really well designed and patient-friendly. So patients enjoy the friendly staff, getting seen quickly. They see things happening. Hospital emergency departments were designed for car crashes, heart attacks, and major life-threatening illnesses, and they do a really good job of that. But these Urgent Cares when you've got a non-life-threatening thing, the community is speaking with their feet. And so, they're coming along to these Urgent Care Clinics, getting great experience, and telling their friends and family. So, as it gets known, the numbers continue to build, and I think that's a really good thing because it's the right care in the right place but no cost. Extended hours. So here in Burnie and Launceston, we're open 14 hours a day now. So if you've got a non-life-threatening injury and you haven't been to an Urgent Care, we welcome you in.
 
JOURNALIST: Sticking with emergency departments, in Launceston, you and Bridget Archer effectively traded blows yesterday over who’s to blame for issues that the LGH has been experiencing. I know we've heard from you that your government's providing record funding to the State Government. You've said that State Government should provide more attention to this, and they are of course run by the states. But just want to get you on issues of bed block with aged care and NDIS at the other end of the hospital. Does the Federal Government have any responsibility here for these sorts of issues?
 
BUTLER: We do. We're responsible for aged care. I've been very open and frank about that when we were negotiating the new hospital funding agreement, which took effect last week on 1 July this year. We put some billions of dollars on the table for state governments and said that we would work with them to focus particularly on expanding aged care supply and moving older patients who are clinically able to be discharged from the hospital, out of hospitals more quickly. And that that was really a response to ministers like Minister Archer but others across the country as well saying that that issue of longer stay, older patients was their number one priority.
 
We put that money on the table. We said we're open to working with them on innovative solutions. And at the end of the negotiations, they decided, as is their right, to just take the money without there being a focus on longer stay, older patients and put it into their general hospital budgets. Now, that was a good-faith offer from us. They decided not to take it up. So instead what we've done is increased particularly hospital funding for smaller jurisdictions like Tasmania by really quite a dramatic amount. Under the old agreement, under Scott Morrison, their increases would have been capped at about an amount of $750 million here in Tasmania for this financial year. Under our agreement, they'll receive $910 million and that's an increase of about 20 per cent.
 
They're receiving substantial additional funds to deal with some of the patient flow issues that I didn't particularly talk about over the last 24 hours. They were coming again from people on the front line, through Emily Shepherd from nurses on the frontline. And all I said yesterday was that time and time again I've been coming back to the north over the last several years and hearing the same stories, that there is something at issue here at the LGH about staffing in the ED, about patient flow, in a way I don't hear at other hospitals.
 
At the end of the day the Tasmanian Government is responsible for the operation of that hospital. We're responsible for providing a share of the funding and we're doing that. We also are responsible for expanding aged care supply and there were billions of dollars additional in the budget several weeks ago for us to continue to do that.
 
I think ultimately, people in Tasmania, people in other states, they get a bit sick of this sort of bickering between different levels of government. They just want to see their governments get on with the job of providing top quality health and aged care and that's what we're trying to focus on.
 
JOURNALIST: You say- the health minister said there are about 100 people in Tasmanian hospitals that are medically ready to be discharged but have nowhere to go. I think that was about the same number, at least in November last year. Whose responsibility is it to make that number smaller?
 
BUTLER: Ultimately there's a shared responsibility about the flow of patients through hospitals. As I said, we wanted to expand that level of cooperation between the Commonwealth and state governments with substantial additional money that we put on the table, states decided not to accept that. But ultimately, I accept that we are responsible at the Commonwealth level for expanding aged care supply. We've got to do that at a very rapid rate now given the degree to which the population is ageing, the speed with which particularly the baby boomer generation is starting to need more aged care support, whether that's in their home or in a residential facility.
 
That's why aged care has been such a focus of our government since we were first elected in 2022 to improve staffing rates, to improve the investability for those aged care providers start building those new facilities. And from my point of view that can't happen quickly enough. We need to see providers building more facilities. We're trying to make it more attractive for them to do that. And I accept that's ultimately a Commonwealth responsibility.
 
JOURNALIST: On the Telstra outage, there are reports of WA police saying that Triple Zero calls are being affected. Is the government aware of if Triple Zero calls or Triple Zero services have been impacted in any way?
 
BUTLER: That's the first I've heard of that. We've been obviously monitoring this outage very closely as a government. The relevant minister has already issued a statement about our response to that, made very clear that telco operators are required to have a Triple Zero backup in place. So I'm sorry I don't have any response to make to that. That's the first I've heard of that report that you're suggesting from WA. But particularly over recent months, our government has made it absolutely clear that telco operators must have a Triple Zero fall back in place to ensure that people are always able to contact emergency services if required.
 
JOURNALIST: Given the dispute over multiple sclerosis drugs pricing, are you satisfied the current comparator and benchmark pricing rules for the PBS are fit for purpose?
 
BUTLER: We've said that we want to have a significant review of that, a comparator selection system, and we're in the middle of that. I announced that last September, and that work is underway of that particular guideline for the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee, because I have heard from industry that after many years of that system operating we do need to make sure that it’s fit for purpose into the future.
 
In terms of the MS drugs that are being considered by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee this week. There is a meeting between the committee and the relevant sponsors of those two drugs. My position is very clear. I want to see them remain on the PBS. I'm very clear about the difference that they are making to many Australians living with MS, and I want to make sure that drug continues to be available for them at PBS prices.
 
Now, ultimately, I'm going to let that hearing or that meeting take place over the course of this week, and for the drug sponsor on the one hand and the advisory committee on the other to do their work, but I want everyone to be very clear about the outcome I want, and that is that those drugs remain on PBS.
 
JOURNALIST: That review you mentioned I think was the health technology assessment. Why has it taken so long to respond to that review, which addresses so many of these concerns that have been raised by the pharmaceuticals companies?
 
BUTLER: They are complex questions and as soon as I  received the report of the implementation group sometime last year, I think in July or August, I announced what I saw in consultation with the industry as the priority areas. There were 50 recommendations in this report, a very broad and complex piece of work. But I heard very clearly from industry that their priorities were in the area of comparator selection, and the discount rate that is applied by the advisory committee for new applications and that's why that work is underway right now and should be expected to report pretty soon.
 
But I accept in the meantime not just as a result of that health technology assessment review but also as a result of what the US administration has done around medicine pricing, there is significant disruption, frankly, happening to medicine pricing across the world and Australia is not immune from that. Right across the world in pretty much every other market, what is happening right now around these MS drugs and some other drugs is happening in pretty much every other market as well. Pharmaceutical companies are taking, frankly, a more proactive approach to their pricing because they're concerned about potential impacts in the US market, which is such a big market for them.
 
We're working through those issues with industry, with patient groups that are obviously deeply worried about access issues as well, and the review of some of these guidelines is happening in parallel.
 
JOURNALIST: You mentioned the Trump administration there. Are you worried that there could be similar situations now with other drugs given- you know, with the administration and US pharma companies been saying or rallying against the PBS?
 
BUTLER: I'm deeply worried about this and we are seeing it already in relation to other drugs. We've seen the withdrawal of breast cancer and endometriosis drug from the PBS, we've seen other drugs if they're not in the process of potentially being withdrawn, being the subject of this sort of quite different posture on pricing from pharmaceutical companies. And they say that is because of the international reference pricing dynamic right now, largely driven by the US, but potentially by some other big markets as well.
 
I'm very worried about this. The PBS has delivered terrific outcomes for many decades to Australia. Bringing the world's best medicines here to Australia and making them available at affordable PBS prices is really part of the magic of this great Labor legacy from the 1940s. If there is a threat to access of those medicines, then I'm determined to do everything we can. I know our government is determined to do everything we can to make sure that Australian patients can see still expect that they'll get access to the world's best medicines.
 
JOURNALIST: Just finally, come back to the MS medication, how confident are you that a resolution can be come to here, and what would your message be to patients who rely on this medication and describe it as life and death and are genuinely fearful of losing it?
 
BUTLER: My position has been very clear since this first emerged, I made that position clear publicly, but also to those who are involved in this meeting, we need these medicines to remain on the PBS. They are changing the lives of many Australians who are living with MS for the better. I want to see that to continue. Thanks everyone.