GP Clinics

Mrs HURN (Schubert) (14:34): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Will the government fund GP clinics to stay open for longer? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mrs HURN: The opposition has announced that if we are elected we will fund GP clinics to stay open after hours, which is a measure called for by the Royal Australian College of GPs. On FIVEaa radio last week, Paul Ekkelbloom from the Ambulance Employees Association said, 'People are finding it tough to get to the GPs, their illnesses take hold and that's when we see them, and then we really don't have a lot of choice other than to take them either to an alternative care pathway or to the hospital.'

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:35): We have been supporting, together with the federal government, urgent care clinics that have enabled many South Australians to access after-hours services, of course in addition to our priority care services across the state, as well as of course the support we have provided to Healthdirect to enable people to speak directly to a GP through those services.

The key thing about all of those services is that they are all free for South Australians to access—they are absolutely free for people to be able to access those services. What the opposition's policy is, which is only proposing a trial, let's be clear—a trial, they are proposing—that there is no provision for those services to be bulk-billed at all, so potentially people are paying $100 out of pocket for seeing some of those GPs out of hours, which isn't going to help at all the situation in terms of people being deterred from going to an emergency department, where of course going to an emergency department is free.

Having a $100 payment to go to an after-hours GP of course is welcome for people who can afford it, but we are going to continue to work with the federal government in terms of allowing people to access those bulk-billed and free services because we know that that is going to help in terms of people being able to access services other than having to go to a free emergency department.