Press Conference – Rockingham | Prime Minister of Australia
MIKKI SILVERMAN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR FORHEALTH: Welcome, my name is Mikki Silverman, and I’m an Executive Director of ForHealth. I’m joined today by our Operations Manager for WA, Cat Rippon, and our Regional Clinical Director, Dr. Carmichael Patu. We have really great pleasure in welcoming the Honourable Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister of Australia, the Honourable Roger Cook, Premier for Western Australia, and the Honourable Madeleine King, Minister for Resources and Northern Australia and member for Brand. I’d like to start by acknowledging the traditional owners and custodians of the land, the Binjareb and Whadjuk, Nyoongar people, and pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging. I am personally looking forward to voting Yes in the upcoming referendum. ForHealth is the second largest general practice in the country, we service more than 7 million patient visits annually. Our mission is accessible and universal health care for all Australians. At ForHealth our focus is in areas such as Rockingham where we are today, this is one of the part of the lowest quartile of socioeconomic areas, and it’s also a high population growth corridor. This site is run by our fabulous Practice Manager, Jackie, and we actually service more than 500 patients every day, and we have a multiple of services such as General Practice, CT, ultrasound. We also have dental, pathology and pharmacy on site all run through the state of the art facility. We congratulate this government, the Prime Minister and the Health Minister for cutting through the politics of healthcare and focusing on patient access. The federal budget was a major step forward, allowing billing to be accessible for healthcare cardholders through a tripling of the incentive and a return to sustainable indexation. Urgent care sites are an equally important change to our system, allowing practices like ours to support a secondary system which we know is under immense pressure. For example, our six urgent care sites in Victoria, in the last three months have seen more than 15,000 patients. Fifty per cent of those patients would have otherwise presented at the local emergency department. Nine out of ten of those patients said that they would strongly recommend our service. Today’s opening would not have been possible without the hard work and dedication of the team here, led by Katrina. It’s due to the countless hours that we’re able to be here today. And I would also like to thank the support of the Western Australian Primary Health Alliance, and thanks to everybody for coming today. We are really pleased to open this Medicare Urgent Care Clinic to support the community of Rockingham and the local Rockingham General Hospital. And it now gives me great pleasure to hand over to the Honourable Minister King.
MADELEINE KING, MINISTER FOR RESOURCES AND NORTHERN AUSTRALIA: Thanks so much Mikki, and thanks for that very kind welcome here today. It really is an honour to be here at the opening of the Urgent Care Clinic here in Rockingham. It’s an absolute game changer for health care in this area. It takes a lot of pressure off our very busy emergency department at Rockingham General Hospital and we know it’s going to be great for the local community of Rockingham and its surrounding suburbs. Now I also want to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land in which we meet, and I too look forward to voting Yes in the referendum coming later this year for the Voice and I know lots of people in this community will think so as well. It’s really my great pleasure to have three great friends of mine here today. Firstly, the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, who is a frequent visitor to Rockingham, a couple of times at least I think since he’s been Prime Minister, but many times before he’s visited my beautiful hometown. It’s great to have him here today. And also my friend the Premier Roger Cook, the Member for Kwinana. It’s great to see that the premiership of this state remains in Brand, having passed from Mark McGowan as a former member for Rockingham and now to Roger who is a great leader for our state, and also a great advocate for health care in the state. And I’m also especially pleased to be here with Magenta Marshall, who is the candidate for Rockingham in the upcoming by-election on the 29th of July. I’ve known Magenta since before I became elected, she’s worked very hard in the community, grew up in Baldivis, went to Tranby College, a real great local. A young woman of great promise who I know will stand up for the community of Rockingham and the citizens of Rockingham in the WA Labor government. So with that, I will hand over to the Prime Minister and thank you once again for coming out here.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Thanks very much Madeleine. It is fantastic to be here with you as the local member and good to see you on the mend. And also to be here with my friend the newish Premier of Western Australia, Roger Cook. We caught up in Sydney when Premier Cook visited as part of the visit by President Widodo of Indonesia just during the week, and it’s great to be here in your local community as well. And fantastic to be here with the new candidate, Magenta Marshall, the candidate for Rockingham who we’re all hoping will replace the former Premier, Mark McGowan as the local MP here. I am really proud to be here opening this Medicare Urgent Care Clinic, the second to be opened here in Western Australia. The first was there in Perth, but over the coming period there’s going to be openings in Broome, Bunbury, Joondalup, Midland, Murdoch, Perth, and Rocky. So what we will see is this model that’s been successful overseas rolled out. I’ve been working with state and territory governments as Prime Minister to work on ways in which we can strengthen Medicare, take pressure off the public hospital system, whilst providing people the support that they need, when they need it. But also importantly as well, using the Medicare system with bulk billing. So in the budget, we tripled the Medicare bulk billing incentive, making an enormous difference. Giving access to bulk billing to some 11 million Australians as part of what we’re doing to strengthen Medicare as well as lowering the cost of living and taking pressure off families. We met a young woman who’d sliced her finger whilst trying to bake a banana cake earlier today. Now she could have set an emergency department anywhere in Australia, it’s the same because emergency departments, of course, prioritise people with acute health issues that need to be dealt with as a matter of urgency. But it does have to be dealt with, so coming here, getting access to immediate care, doing it for free where you only need your Medicare card, not your credit card, is what Medicare Urgent Care Clinics are all about, and we’ll be rolling them out. We promised fifty at the election campaign, we’ve upped that by adding an additional eight onto that in the Budget in May because we regard this as so important. It comes on top of the other support that we’ve done as well. On January 1, cheaper medicines came in by lowering the cost from $42.50 down to $30. Now in Western Australia alone, patients have saved over $13 million on 1.2 million cheaper scripts – making an enormous difference. In addition to that, we’ve delivered over $11 million to the Western Australian government as part of the pilot programme to support the use of nurse practitioners to take pressure off GPs. So, we have a comprehensive plan to deal with health reform, we’ll continue to work with state and territory governments, and Roger and I had a discussion about this just this week. But we’re also about doing it in a way that reduces the cost of living pressures which we understand families are under. This is a fantastic initiative, it’s been welcomed wherever it’s been rolling out, and there’s indeed some competition from providers who want to adopt this model, because we know that it works. We know it makes a difference. It’s good for patients here, good for the local care, good for taking pressure off public hospitals, but also of course, good for family budgets as well.
ROGER COOK, PREMIER OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA: Thanks very much, Prime Minister, and thank you for the opportunity to join you today for this important announcement. Health care reform is one of the most important policy areas that we can apply ourselves to, and I’m really proud to be part of this announcement today. We know that unplanned care in our community is one of the most difficult issues for our emergency departments to manage. These primarily triage four and five patients continue to be under-served by our health system. One, because we don’t have the GP availability for them to be able to get the care they need. But two, also because they can’t get speedy care when they go to their emergency departments. The opportunities for them to go to an Urgent Care Clinic is obviously an incredibly important initiative. This is a reform that I’ve been wanting to see in place ever since I was Health Minister in the McGowan government. We didn’t have a great Commonwealth government with a vision for health care reform the way we do today. And it’s because of that what we are really looking forward for this initiative, the Urgent Care Clinics to make a significant improvement in the way we provide care for people in our hospitals. Already when have seen a good flow of patients coming from the local ED at Rockingham Hospital into the clinic here so that people can get more speedy care and can continue to make sure that we get to our other, more urgent patients in the EDs in a much better way. We all know that our hospital systems right around the country are struggling to deal with the level of demand at the moment. The government’s commitment of $450 million to invest in our local EDs has been an important part of making sure that our EDs have the resources they need to make sure that they can provide the care that they want. But the fact of the matter remains is we need to make sure we have a more integrated system between our primary care system and our emergency departments. There are over 400,000 Western Australians that go to our EDs each year that could be treated in this sort of environment. So, we’re very much looking forward to seeing this initiative continue to grow. We’re looking forward to seeing it working with our EDs to improve the care for people in those emergency departments. But most importantly of all, we are really interested to see the improvement in the care for Western Australians, and that is above all our objective in making sure we have great health systems that can provide world class health care. I want to congratulate the Commonwealth Government for this great initiative. The funding is important but it’s the shared vision which is most important in terms of making sure we provide great care for all Australians.
JOURNALIST: You quoted fifty-eight, how many are open now?
PRIME MINISTER: There are a range open in Victoria and two here in WA. What we promised was that they’d be open from July. It’s only July 8, so we’re getting there, the funding is all in the budget. We aim to have all fifty-eight up and running by the end of this year.
JOURNALIST: Are you confident that will happen?
PRIME MINISTER: Yes, we are confident that will happen and that’s why we put the funding in the budget. What we have is some competition, making sure that we get the sites right. If you look at where the sites are here, I’m a regular visitor to Western Australia but I’m obviously not a local, but Broome, Bunbury, Joondalup, Midland, Murdoch, Perth, Rocky – that covers a fair bit of the population of this state. And if you look at where they’re being rolled out, effectively, this model makes an enormous difference, and it’s made a difference to the patient who we were able to meet just earlier.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, do they vet how many people can come through the clinic? Because you don’t have to pay, obviously it’s Medicare, do they vet how many people come through?
PRIME MINISTER: No one goes and breaks an arm so they can get the opportunity to go to a clinic. The idea is for urgent care, so things that aren’t, so a step up. The model is if you have a regular meeting with your GP about a condition that you have, then you’ll go to your GP. If you have a heart attack or something that requires that emergency department level care, I ended up in the emergency department a couple of years ago after a car accident. You ride by ambulance, you get dealt with. But for when someone cuts their finger, it’s a good example, making a banana cake, or a little child falls off their skateboard or their bike, they need stitches. That level of care that can be dealt with at a clinic like this, dealt with by a nurse or doctor or health professional here. It is that step up, taking pressure off emergency departments. And when I’ve met with State and Territory Premiers and Chief Ministers, they all talk about one of the pressures that’s on is with the decline of primary health care under the former government over ten years of undermining Medicare. More and more people would turn up at emergency departments for something that frankly, can be dealt with efficiently, expeditiously, as the cut finger was here earlier today. Stitches put in, sent home without clogging up an emergency department. This is all about better care for patients, but importantly as well, doing it through the Medicare system.
JOURNALIST: Peter Dutton says you were politicising the Robodebt Royal Commission. What do you say to that?
PRIME MINISTER: Yesterday, the Royal Commissioner handed down a damning report that spoke about, to use her terms, the venality, incompetence and cowardice of the administration of Robodebt by the former government from the time it was implemented by then Minister Morrison, through over four and a half years. In spite of the fact that there were warnings that said it was clear that it was, to quote the Royal Commission, ‘neither fair nor legal’ and that it was a ‘and cruel mechanism’. And we know that it had a devastating impact on people. More than 500,000 Australians chased up for debts that they did not owe, that were not legally applied, and enormous pressure with consequences where some young people, and we’ve heard from their mothers, took their own lives. This had real consequences. The Royal Commission Report spoke about collusion and dishonesty over four and a half years. Now, I would have thought given that Peter Dutton sat in the Cabinet for all of that time, sat in the Parliament for all of that time and since and defended this system, that the Royal Commission could have seen some recognition from Peter Dutton that this isn’t about politics, it’s about people. There could have been a hint of empathy from Peter Dutton, but there was none. None. A refusal to even say that anything wrong happened here in spite of the very clear evidence in a report that is almost 1000 pages long that documents the human impact of taking humans out of Human Services, and that’s what happened here. This should not have happened, it should never happen again, and I find it astonishing. Just as Peter Dutton and other members of the former government, and now opposition voted to defend Scott Morrison’s multiple ministries, and the trashing of democratic processes there, there seems to be no contrition whatsoever for this. And for Peter Dutton to say that this is about politics and the date of the by-election that is happening because Stuart Robert resigned his seat in Parliament, that’s not something that we had control over as a government. What we have done also is to release, in a transparent way, the report as soon as we received it. Within a couple of hours of receiving it we released it for all to see. We will consider the recommendations that are in that report in an orderly way. But I’m very disappointed that Peter Dutton can’t even bring himself to show any empathy for people at a time like this.
PRIME MINISTER: There are names in that report which haven’t been made public who may be referred for acts of criminality. Do you know the names of those people?
PRIME MINISTER: No, I don’t.
JOURNALIST: What are your hopes then with those people that are named in that secret part of the document? What are your hopes will happen to those people?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, it’s appropriate that procedures take place in accordance with the recommendations of the Royal Commissioner. There hasn’t been political interference in this, that’s the point. The Royal Commissioner made the decision that that needed to stay in a sealed report so as to not prejudice the action that will take place now. She has made a range of recommendations about people in that report. She didn’t provide that report to myself as Prime Minister, the head of my department does have that report, it was provided to him. She’s been very transparent about why that hasn’t been released, and I would have thought that it is appropriate that in a report that is about proper processes been discarded, that proper processes occur here. My government is an orderly, considered government that makes decisions based upon proper advice, and we’re doing that on this occasion as well.
JOURNALIST: Should Scott Morrison at least think about his position in Parliament in light of the findings?
PRIME MINISTER: I think that, you know, it’s not up to me as Prime Minister to determine what action Scott Morrison will take. I do note as well, that Scott Morrison has also shown no contrition whatsoever for the impact that his actions as minister have had. And I do note very serious findings of the Royal Commissioner about his evidence before the Royal Commission.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, I’m just wondering if you’ve got a comment on the 25 year old Australian man, West Australian man who died in Italy in a scooter crash.
PRIME MINISTER: Sorry, I haven’t been advised of that.
JOURNALIST: On the Voice to Parliament, there has been support for including Indigenous or First Nations people in the Constitution, it has great support. But then the Voice itself has significant support issues right now. Do you concede that you should have perhaps split both questions up? Why did you package it all in one?
PRIME MINISTER: The Parliament did that. The Parliament did that and there were no amendments to it. And I’ll make this point, no amendments were moved in the Senate, there were no votes in the Senate on this, or indeed, the process that occurred was very clear. But it’s a process that led up to 2017, where First Nations people gathered at Uluru and said that they wanted constitutional recognition. That was spoken about since the last century under the Howard Government. And the form they wanted was an advisory group, a voice that could be listened to about matters that directly affect them. The Voice is just the means to the end. The end is closing the gap on education outcomes, on health, on housing, on incarceration rates. We have in this country an eight year life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, we need to do better. We have more chance of, if you’re a young Indigenous male, more chance of going to jail than going to university. We need to do better. And you’re more than twice as likely to take your own life if you are an Indigenous person than a non-Indigenous person. I make this point about the Voice as well, that there are some who are now saying, had the opportunity and the almost decade during government to legislate on The Voice, who are now saying they want it to be legislated rather than in the Constitution. Putting it in the Constitution doesn’t detail the operations and structure and functions of the Voice, that’s very clear from the third part of what’s put forward. But it seems to me there’s an inconsistency there that was pointed out in an article by Chris Kenny today in the Australian. That if you say that it’s okay to legislate it, that is what is going to happen. The details will be legislated after the referendum, with a successful referendum later this year. And I’ll give the Premier an opportunity to speak on these issues as well.
PREMIER OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA: Just firstly on the Voice, obviously, that’s an incredibly important part of our journey as a nation. The Voice is a very simple proposition – it’s about recognition, it’s about consultation. And from that perspective, there is no reason why anyone, any reasonable thinking person shouldn’t want to get behind this initiative. This is going to be an important step for our country. And I urge everyone to take the opportunity to vote Yes in the Voice referendum.
JOURNALIST: Premier, I just want to direct this both to yourself and the Prime Minister on the Voice if I could. As you know, there’s been spirited debate about a local issue in Western Australia about the Aboriginal heritage cultural laws. The Liberals have been very vocal against those laws. I just want to ask yourself and the Prime Minister, are you concerned that that will have an effect on the debate in WA or cloud the issue when it comes to voting for the Voice? What’s your opinion on that?
PREMIER OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA: Look, I noticed that the Liberal opposition and the Nationals put that particular proposition to me and I asked them why they were interested in conflating the two issues. Obviously, we are bringing in modernised laws in relation to the protection of our Aboriginal cultural heritage. And we also later this year will be asked the question in relation to the Voice. The only reason why you would want to conflate these issues, particularly in the context of the current debate, is if you were to somehow trying to use one or the other to cool that discussion. Aboriginal cultural heritage laws do the same thing as the Voice, that is they respect, acknowledge and consult. And nothing can be fairer than that.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, are you concerned that WA at the moment might somehow –
PRIME MINISTER: I’ll tell you what I think when I look at WA and Indigenous issues. I want to give a shout out to Ken Wyatt, the former Indigenous Affairs Minister, who was out there advocating when we met with the referendum working group and before the big press conference that was held in March. Disappointingly of course, the National Party said they’d vote No last year. The Liberal Party said they’d vote No, Peter Dutton before even the committee process had occurred, so that’s a matter for them. But I think Ken Wyatt showed great principle, and he flew across the country overnight to be at the press conference that was held in the Blue Room announcing the words that would be put in the draft legislation that was introduced into the Parliament. I note that some of my understanding is that the leader of the Liberal Party here has said that they will support, or the former, hard to keep up, said that they would vote Yes. I encourage people, this should not be a party political issue. This is something most of which was developed under the former government, set up the Dodson and Leeser committee of the Parliament, who set up the Calma-Langton committee to examine these issues. And someone like Julian Leeser I also pay tribute to, he has played such a constructive effort. Now, I took great heart when he was appointed the Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs and the Shadow Attorney-General. I thought that’s a sign that Peter Dutton will be prepared to be constructive and to work together on this. It’s a pity that that hasn’t happened, but I’ll continue to be constructive, I’ll continue to engage, I’ll continue to seek to maximise the Yes vote. And I say this as well, that leading business people like Michael Chaney, deserve better, as does Kate for the appalling advertisement that was put in the Financial Review this week. As does the Indigenous man who was represented in a way that, you know, you just shake your head that someone could even think of doing that in 2023. I appreciate the fact that Nine have apologised for carrying that advertisement, as they should have. But this isn’t some fringe group, this has a former prime minister as a member of the Board of this group. We need to do better. We need to recognise that Indigenous people are amongst our most disadvantaged people and we need to do better, and that’s what this is about. Simple as that.
JOURNALIST: How important is WA to the vote, Prime Minister?
PRIME MINISTER: WA is always important, which is why I regularly come across the Nullarbor and why I’m a regular visitor here. Why I had the whole Cabinet here in Port Hedland, why the whole Cabinet will be back, I think, next month – Roger?
PREMIER OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA: That’s right.
PRIME MINISTER: Next month here, meeting in Perth again. WA is an important part of the nation. I want every state to vote Yes in this referendum. This can be a moment of unity, and I’ll make this prediction, when the Apology to the Stolen Generation was made, in the lead up to that there were all sorts of predictions about the negative consequences it would have – there were none, it was an uplifting moment for the nation. We were more united as a result of it, it was important to advance reconciliation, and I’ll continue to do that.
JOURNALIST: Are you confident that the Yes vote will bounce back in support very soon?
PRIME MINISTER: I think that when people examine exactly what this is about, look at the wording that has been put forward, the very clear recognition and consultation that this will provide, that there will be support for Yes. It has the support overwhelmingly of people who examined it, and people will make their own decisions and I respect that. But if you look at the business community, sporting codes, individual sporting clubs, faith groups, trade unions, civil society organisations, people who have a look at it are coming to a common position. And they’ll talk with their neighbours, their friends, their work colleagues, the people who are on the side of the kids footy on the weekend, they’ll talk about these issues. And when they come to a conclusion, I hope they come to a conclusion that there’s nothing to lose here, but everything to gain.
JOURNALIST: The NATO Summit, what are you hoping to achieve there?
PRIME MINISTER: The NATO summit will be critical. It is a great honour for me as Australia’s Prime Minister to have been invited to address the two NATO Summits, last year in Madrid, and this year in Vilnius. I’ll travel via Berlin tomorrow, I’ll leave Western Australia to arrive in Germany tomorrow night their time and have bilateral meetings as a guest of the German government. There we will have some important work to do about our trade relations, about working together on issues like hydrogen, that’s so important for Western Australia, and also working on exports and our economic relationship. And I as well want to thank Chancellor Scholz for his support, where we’re negotiating out a trade agreement with Europe. But secondly as well, I’ll then travel to Lithuania the next day, where I will present, along with Japan, Korea and New Zealand at the Indo-Pacific Four, we will be presenting a Australia’s view of international security issues. It’s an opportunity for me to follow up from the Shangri-La Dialogue speech, keynote address that I gave in Singapore just a month ago. It will also be an opportunity to engage, I’ll address NATO’s full Summit, all the members of NATO later that day on Wednesday. But I’ll also have important bilateral meetings that we’re organising, including with President Zelenskyy, President Macron, Prime Minister Sanchez, Prime Minister Costa, and a range of other world leaders as well. And an opportunity to catch up with President Biden, Prime Minister Sunak and our other friends across the world. This is troubled times and there is strategic competition in our region and throughout the world. We’ve seen the illegal and immoral Russian invasion of Ukraine have a devastating impact on the people of Ukraine, but it’s also impacted on every price of goods in every country in the world. It is one of the major factors in the spike in global inflation that we’ve seen, so we’re not immune. Which is why we have to be engaged – we have a responsibility to do that. Australia is well regarded in the world, we’re clear about our position, we’re clear about our support for human rights and democracy, and the rule of law and multilateral engagement. And I’ll be advancing that at the NATO Summit and in the bilaterals that will be held.