Dr WEBSTER (Mallee) (11:29): The subject today is urgent care clinics. Of course, it's put up by Labor, who want to gloat about their 137 urgent care clinics, 66 per cent of which are in red electorates. It kind of tells you everything about the Labor government. One of the reasons that the Labor government is so keen on this is that most of their seats are in cities. What they want to do is stop people having to go into emergency departments. Fair enough; when a person or a patient is sick and they go into an ED clinic, it costs the taxpayer $616—every visit. If they go into an urgent care clinic, the dollar figure does reduce. I can understand why the clinics are quite popular. It becomes $216 per visit for exactly the same condition.

But get this. Out in the regions, where we don't have urgent care clinics, it is primary care—preventative care—that stops those ED and UCC visits, and the cost to the taxpayer for a level B consultation is $42.88. I personally think that taxpayers around Australia would think: 'Let us deliver quality health care that stops people having to go to hospital, and let's fund primary care adequately. Let us ensure that our primary care clinics out in the regions in particular are funded adequately and that there are systems in place to support GPs to work in regional and rural areas, support nurse practitioners to deliver services in regional areas and support allied healthcare workers to deliver services in regional areas'. Unlike our Labor counterparts across the aisle from me, we don't have those massive hospitals which cost a fortune to run, but we can deliver good quality primary care.

In my view of the world, UCCs are fundamentally bandaids that do not solve the underlying issues. Where we have chronic care, they are missing in action. For people who have chronic diseases—which are much higher in the regions than in metro areas and where people are dying prematurely—the equivalency is not there at all. This is a Labor government focused on metropolitan politics. This is a government that says, 'We've done more than we ever expected in terms of getting urgent care clinics up and running.' What they did was take over primary care clinics that had failed under state governments and add around 50 so that the number looked even better. Are they delivering those clinics in places like Taree, in the member for Lyne's electorate? No. No, they're not. Have they got any intention of putting UCCs out there? No, they absolutely do not. Frankly, in my view as shadow minister for regional health, I would rather the government invested properly in regional health primary care clinics. It is essential.

What we are also missing out on in the regions is decent patient transfer assistance. We've just found out that the Victorian government has dropped the refund, or the reimbursement, for patients who have to travel to Melbourne from Mildura—if you happen to be in Mildura, it's six hours on terrible roads—to 21c per kilometre. They pay their public servants 88c, four times the amount that a patient can get back. They have now decided that airfares will not be reimbursed unless you are literally on a ventilator. My Lord, who thought this was fair? Who thought this had equity? I can tell you right now that the Labor government under the minister for health has no respect for those who live in the regions. This is unconscionable conduct by this government and by the Victorian government. Your postcode should not determine your health status, but, under this government, it absolutely does.