TV interview with Minister Butler, Today Show – 3 March 2025

CHARLES CROUCHER, HOST: 50 more Medicare Urgent Care Clinics are set to be rolled out across the country as Labor makes its biggest investment in Medicare in over 40 years. To discuss, we're joined by the Health Minister, Mark Butler, who is in Brisbane this morning. Minister, good morning to you. It's another big pre-election pledge when it comes to the health portfolio. Where and when will these new clinics be rolled out?
 
MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE, MARK BUTLER: We'll roll them out over the course of the next financial year if we're elected, in 2025–26. That will bring the total number to about 140, and it will mean 4 out of 5 Australians will live within 20 minutes’ drive of a Medicare Urgent Care Clinic. They're open 7 days a week, extended hours, and importantly, they are fully bulk billed. By the time the whole network is up and running, 2 million patients will go through these clinics every year. The vast bulk of them would otherwise have ended up waiting hours and hours at crowded hospital emergency departments.
 
CROUCHER: Are they doing their job in keeping those emergency departments free of what are sort of the littler, the smaller the niggling pains that often take up so much time for both the patients and the ED departments?
 
BUTLER: There's no question they are, Charles. Right across the country, we're seeing those non-urgent and semi-urgent presentations, as the hospital staff classify them, have flat lined right across the country, in spite of the fact the network is still getting up and running. But in those hospital areas where there is an Urgent Care Clinic, you're actually seeing those presentations start to drop so that hospital staff there, that doctors and nurses are able to concentrate on the more life-threatening emergencies, which is what hospitals are built for. It is taking pressure off hospitals, but importantly, it's also providing a much better service to patients, including parents who are taking their kids under the age of 15, in very big numbers. They're injured on Saturday afternoon, they fall off the skateboard and they get a quick, high-quality service, completely free of charge, instead of spending all Saturday afternoon and evening at the hospital emergency department.
 
CROUCHER: The Coalition has criticised additional clinics as wasteful spending and questioned their effectiveness. So how confident are you that when those parents take the kid that's fallen off the skateboard or been injured at Saturday afternoon sport, as you describe, into the clinics, are you confident that they are getting the service that would reflect not just on the clinic, but on your government and your priorities?
 
BUTLER: We're getting terrific feedback, and we're evaluating this as it's a new model of care that I announced at the last election. At the time, the Coalition said it was a disaster and the wrong fit for Australia, but 1.2 million patients who have gone through already reflect a very different response, they're incredibly supportive of it. Seventy per cent of doctors say this is a good thing, and 80 per cent of doctors say it's relieving pressure on our emergency department. The Coalition has been very unsupportive of this, said it's wasteful spending. Of the 50 I announced yesterday, they could only bring themselves to support 4 of them, which all happen to be in Liberal target seats. There's no question there's a strong choice coming at the next election on Medicare, whether it's free visits to the doctor or whether it's Urgent Care Clinics, and new models of care, we are very focused on strengthening Medicare.
 
CROUCHER: I was going through the list of those 50. It's a good time to be in a marginal seat, some of those locations look convenient on the electoral map. We'll go to that later. Let's turn to foreign affairs, just this breakdown of relations between President Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, our Prime Minister has confirmed and reaffirmed the bipartisan support. Is there further tangible actions Australia is considering to help Ukraine in what is being called this crossroads moment for the world?
 
BUTLER: Our leadership in that area, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Affairs Minister, and the Defence Minister, are in constant contact with Ukraine and with other allies, NATO allies as well, about what useful contribution we can make to the heroic resistance that Ukraine is putting up against this illegal and immoral invasion by Russia. We've contributed a huge amount, particularly compared to other countries who aren't in that NATO area of Europe, and we stand ready to do anything more that we reasonably can to assist Ukraine.
 
CROUCHER: Finally, as a South Australian, you wouldn't have an election on Gather Round, would you?
 
BUTLER: That's a matter for the Prime Minister, who's not a South Australian, but ultimately, that's a matter for the Prime Minister.
 
CROUCHER: We'll wait and see Minister. Thank you for your time.
 
BUTLER: Thanks Charles.