Press conference with Minister Butler, Newcastle – 19 May 2026

PAT CONROY, MEMBER FOR SHORTLAND: Well, good morning everyone. I'm Pat Conroy, the federal Member for Shortland. It's great to be here at Charlestown Medical and Dental Clinic as well as the Charlestown Medicare Urgent Care Clinic with the Minister for Health, Mark Butler, my colleague and friend and neighbour, the Deputy Speaker, Sharon Claydon, the Member from Newcastle, Dr Hamidi from the centre, as well as other representatives of both Charlestown Medical and Dental Clinic as well as the Medicare Urgent Care Clinic.
 
After cost of living, the number one issue raised with me is access to bulk billing doctors. Access to equitable healthcare is the number one issue for the people of Shortland after cost of living, and that's why it's been such a key focus for the Albanese Labor Government. We've made a range of interventions to make sure that people in our community get access to health care, whether ending the ridiculous ban on overseas trained doctors working here, saving the much-loved GP after-hours access service, and getting the Medicare Urgent Care Clinics for our community. This one in Charlestown is one of the busiest in the country. It sees between 50 and 70 patients a day, and it is so popular that we've increased funding to lengthen the hours to 8 am to 10 pm and to get an extra doctor and extra nurses for this clinic. It is making a huge difference in relieving pressure on local hospitals in our community, especially the John.
 
The tripling of the bulk billing incentive is also helping with bulk billing, and this clinic itself has increased the number of bulk billing doctors as a result of that. But Sharon and I and Mark Butler and our other colleagues have been very clear that bulk billing rates in our area have not been increasing as fast as the rest of the country, and that's why we're overjoyed to see Mark Butler deliver $25 million in last week's Budget to establish 6 fully bulk billed GP clinics in our community – 6 clinics across Lake Macquarie, Central Coast, Hunter, and Newcastle that will make a difference, that will allow locals to see GPs for free, as well as placing a bit of competitive pressure on other doctors in our area. So, this is yet again demonstrating that the Albanese Labor Government is committed to getting fair healthcare for our community. Every day we get up and fight for equitable access to healthcare for our community.
 
And it's a great pleasure to be joined by Mark Butler, who is no stranger to this clinic, who is no stranger to the Hunter, who is no stranger to fighting for better health care for everyone in our community. And it's a great pleasure that I hand over to Mark to make some comments.
 
MARK BUTLER, MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGEING, MINISTER FOR DISABILITY AND THE NDIS: Thanks, Pat, and thanks to Pat and Sharon for welcoming me back to this terrific region. It's a little bit wet, but beautiful to be back here as well. And as Pat has said, Pat and Sharon, but also Dan Repacholi, Meryl Swanson in the Hunter, and Gordon Reid and Emma McBride have been on me from the beginning of our time in government about bulk billing rates in this region. Right across the country, bulk billing was in freefall when we came to government as a result of almost decades-long freezing of the Medicare rebate. Literally in freefall through the course of 2022 into 2023. In our first big Budget in ‘23, we tripled the bulk billing incentive, and that started to turn things around across the country. And on 1 November last year, we made the biggest investment in bulk billing in the country's history, extending bulk building support to every Australian whether or not they had a concession card and providing practices an additional incentive if they bulk billed all of their patients all of the time. And since then, since 1 November, we've seen the number of bulk billing practices across the country increase dramatically. We expected to get to 3600 bulk billing practices by 2028. We're already at 3800.
 
But as Pat just indicated, we haven't seen a shift here in Newcastle and those surrounding regions, Lake Macquarie, the Hunter, particularly the lower Hunter, and the Central Coast. The bulk billing rate here in that region is 15 per cent below the national average. It's 20 per cent lower than the New South Wales average, and it's a whopping 30 per cent lower than the bulking rate you see in Western and South Western Sydney. There you've got bulking rates of about 95 per cent. Here in Newcastle and surrounding regions, it's more like 65 per cent. The number of fully bulk billing practices, 100 per cent bulk billing, in this region is half the New South Wales average, and there's simply no rationale for that. It is not more expensive to run a general practice in this region than it is in Sydney. Arguably, it's cheaper. As Pat said, these practices now have access to doctors in the way they didn't before. There is simply a cultural issue in general practice in this region, and we're determined to change that culture.
 
I've warned this general practice community quite openly for the last few years. If we didn't see an increase in bulk billing, that means people in this community enjoying the benefits of our bulk billing investments like other members of the Australian community are, we would intervene in this market. And so, we will be funding the establishment of 6 new fully bulk billing clinics in this region over the coming 12 months. We expect them to open by middle of next year. And just those 6 clinics we expect will provide about 155,000 additional free visits to the doctor in and of themselves. But the bigger benefit, I hope, will be to drive competition in this region and to see the sort of change we're seeing everywhere else in Australia around bulk billing flow to Newcastle and those surrounding regions as well so people in this community can see the benefit of the huge taxpayer investment into bulk billing that's happened over the last 3 years.
 
Dr Hamidi, are you going to say something before I take questions?
 
SEYED HAMIDI, CHARLESTOWN MEDICAL AND DENTAL CENTRE: I just want to thank you, the ministers, for coming and being extremely supportive as always, and that urgent care was an absolute, absolute game changer in the Newcastle area. I really thank you, and I'm almost certain sure with all of these bonuses and things, definitely we're going to be more helpful to the patients, better care, and I thank you guys again.
 
JOURNALIST: Minister, how do plan on staffing these clinics?
 
BUTLER: When we came to government, there had been some changes made by the Morrison government to restrict the ability of practices in this community to recruit overseas-trained doctors. We removed those restrictions. We're training a lot more Australians to become GPs themselves. There are unprecedented numbers of junior doctors this year training as GPs in Australia. We've never seen a higher number. So we want to train more Australians to be GPs as well.
 
But in the meantime, we've also made it easier for practice owners to recruit particularly doctors from the UK, Ireland, and New Zealand, countries where we have very high confidence in their training systems, effectively equivalent to Australian training systems. And you've seen those doctors flood in. It's a great place to live obviously, but it's also a great place to practice medicine. So, that ability of this region now to recruit those overseas-trained doctors as well as recruiting Australian-trained doctors will mean I'm very confident that these new practices will be able to recruit the doctors we need.
 
JOURNALIST: Minister, where are the clinics going to be located within the Hunter and Central Coast?
 
BUTLER: This will be implemented through an arm’s length competitive process that the Primary Health Network of this region will conduct. They'll look at particular parts of this region that have lower than average bulk billing rates. As I said, in the Hunter, that's particularly probably in the lower part of the Hunter Valley, Newcastle, areas around Lake Macquarie, the Central Coast. That Primary Health Network will examine bulk billing rates very carefully and target this investment to get the biggest bang for buck for those local communities.
 
JOURNALIST: Is 6 clinics enough to drive the change that you want to see?
 
BUTLER: We're very confident this will make a real difference to this region. As I said in and of themselves, these practices will provide significant additional access to bulk billers. And that's not just good for the hip pocket of people in this community, we know the lack of bulk billing access means that more and more Australians are choosing not to go to the doctor because of cost. We want to make sure that people in this community, as more broadly across Australia, go to the doctor when they feel they need to rather than when they feel they can afford to. We've carefully thought about this, and 6 clinics we think will not just add bulk billed access to this community, it will drive that competitive force that we know is frankly sorely needed in this community. The cultural refusal of general practice to shift in the way we've seen everywhere else in the country needs a shake-up, and this investment will deliver that shake-up.
 
JOURNALIST: In terms of locations, I know you mentioned the Primary Health Network will be assessing and putting their cases forward, but say communities like the Upper Hunter which don't have the massive population that we have here in Newcastle, they have issues with long waits for hospitals and things like that. Will there be a focus on getting one of these clinics in places like Muswellbrook, for instance?
 
BUTLER: That will ultimately be a matter for the Primary Health Network. We want this to happen in an arm's length way from government. That's how we've conducted all of our investments, the urgent care clinics and such like. And I have high confidence in this Primary Health Network to do that work well. As I said, the primary intention of this is to drive bulk billing rates. So they’ll look at areas like the Upper Hunter, which have seen a response to our bulk billing investments more than the Lower Hunter has for example, and the area around Lake Macquarie and Newcastle. So they’ll look at that on that basis. What are the bulk billing rates? What shift has there been in the general practice community since our record investments?
 
JOURNALIST: How do you expect this to flow onto emergency department waits and things like that? Because using Muswellbrook as an example, there are some things like even welcoming a baby, you can't necessarily do that in Muswellbrook at the moment. So do you see that then hopefully opening up those services again in those areas?
 
BUTLER: We're working very closely with the New South Wales government to do what we can to relieve pressure on emergency departments. We're in an urgent care clinic. That is probably the biggest change that's happened in our health system over the last several years. Once the network is fully up and running, which will be in the next couple of weeks, around 2 million patients every year will go through urgent care clinics, most of whom say they otherwise would have gone to an emergency department. But obviously access to other healthcare services, bulk bill general practice services, maternity services that you mentioned, are important as well and we'll continue to work with the New South Wales Government as we do with other state governments.
 
JOURNALIST: Minister, there was a lot of hope that the John Hunter Health and Innovation Precinct would have received some funding in the federal Budget but it didn't. What's the Commonwealth's attitude towards funding that project?
 
BUTLER: We're not able to fund every single good health idea, every single good idea more broadly beyond the health portfolio in our budgets. We receive a huge number of pre-Budget submissions from the health sector, and as much as I'd love to fund every single one of them, there's simply not the capacity at the best of times, let alone frankly at very challenging economic times that we face right now. But this is a great health region and I'm more than willing to continue to engage with those providers .
 
JOURNALIST: Minister, I have a question from our national desk. The United States has banned travellers from countries that are experiencing Ebola outbreaks, Uganda, South Sudan. It’s temporary ban, will Australia consider this ban?
 
BUTLER: My understanding is that's the only country that's put in place a travel ban so far. We're obviously monitoring the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, and we suspect potentially South Sudan very closely. This is a serious outbreak of Ebola, particularly a strain of Ebola that's relatively rare and is not responsive to vaccines and treatments that are in place for other strains of Ebola. Our Health Protection Committee met late yesterday to consider this situation, particularly consider World Health Organization advice. This committee is made up of all of the chief health officers of every jurisdiction, so the New South Wales Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant and all of her equivalents. They'll be monitoring this situation very closely as is the Centre for Disease Control. Today a range of Commonwealth authorities, including Foreign Affairs and Border Force, will also be meeting with our health authorities just to continue to monitor things like travel advice to the region. The DRC is a do-not-travel country based on Smartraveller advice. It has been for some time. They'll be revising or reviewing travel advice for Uganda. We'll also be considering whether there are ways in which we should review the screening systems and screening controls that happen as travellers come into Australia or return to Australia.
 
JOURNALIST: You pushed back on plans to introduce price caps for home care services by July. What is the new date in which you intend to put price caps in place?
 
BUTLER: We haven't set a precise date for that. We'll continue to work on this. It's important to get the price caps right. We've seen in some other programs, the NDIS is one example, that if you set the price cap a little bit too high, everyone moves up to the price cap. And that's not just bad for the Budget, more importantly that's bad for recipients of care as well. So at a time of a lot of price volatility in the economy, particularly connected to the war in Iran, we don't think now is the right time. But Sam Rae this morning, the Aged Care minister, has announced a range of protections against price gouging for recipients of aged care. That builds on the decision we made in the Budget to remove co-contributions for showering and hygiene at home care services. But a range of things as well that Sam Rae announced this morning will just improve those consumer protections for aged care recipients.
 
JOURNALIST: So just to clarify, the government's not considering scrapping the idea of price caps?
 
BUTLER: No, that's not my advice. We'd push this back. We want to do more work on price caps to make sure it doesn't lead to unintended consequences, particularly the price inflation that sometimes price caps does result in if you set the cap at the wrong level. It's a very volatile situation right now with a relatively new support at home program in place, there’s broader price volatility in the economy. So we want to make sure that we do this and we are going to do this at the time that's right.
 
JOURNALIST: Question for Dr Sharon. There's been some polling which suggests that there's quite a bit of pushback in the electorates regarding the changes that the government's made to the tax system. Just wondering what sort of feedback you've had from your constituents following the budget.
 
SHARON CLAYDON, MEMBER FOR NEWCASTLE: It's not been feedback I've been getting from my constituents. So there's a real delight in the fact that they're tackling some serious tax reform. And I think that the – particularly people from not just younger generations, I know this has been really pitched so often about assisting young people into the housing market changes into perhaps capital gains, negative gearing, but really I can't tell you how often it is that it's those parents and grandparents that actually come to see me to say how worried they are about their kids not getting into the market. So it's actually something welcomed by across generations.
 
CONROY:I think Sharon has encapsulated what I'm hearing as well. People elect us to make the tough but fair decisions, and these are important changes to actually give people a fair share, a fair opportunity to buy a home in our community and every other community. So, so far in my engagements at street stalls and in door knocking, people understand why we make the changes. They're sick of scare campaigns. They want governments to act in a national interest and that's what I'm getting so far.