ANNE URQUHART, LABOR CANDIDATE FOR BRADDON: Can I first of all begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging. Can I say thank you to the Prime Minister? Thank you to Minister Butler and thank you to my friend Penny Wong for being here today to support this fantastic announcement. It's fantastic that you can all be on the beautiful north west coast here today, which is my home and where I love. People here, that live here, really make it a better place to live. We are community, and that's what our region is about. It's about community, the proposal for this Burnie health hub here today, which was developed by locals for locals. So it's about community, putting in for community. And I want to congratulate both Jack and Jerome, who are the instigators of this proposal, for the work that they've done in collecting together a whole group of organisations that will come together in this fabulous facility. It's great to have that sort of leadership right here on the ground and the groundswell of community support that that brings with it is unheard of, apart from in these small communities. And I think today, I am very, very pleased to announce that a re-elected Albanese Labor Government will contribute $8 million to this facility to get it off the ground for the people, not only of Burnie, but right across this region.

Thank you. Yes, it deserves a clap. It's fantastic. As you know, the Federal Labor Government has also announced a Medicare Urgent Care Clinic right here in Burnie, and that's because Labor is the party of Medicare. That's what we've done. It's in our DNA, and we will continue to protect, but we will also continue to build on Medicare. And Minister Butler will have more to say on that later. But I want to say a few words about why I'm standing as the candidate for Braddon. I understand what locals across this region want and what they need, because I'm one of them. I've lived here all my life, and I am a local, and I'm very proud that I am standing as the Labor candidate for Braddon. I have shown that I will work hard. I've been in the Senate. I've worked very hard, and I'll continue to work hard if the people put their confidence in me on May the third. From the day that I first got back at work, I'm very pleased to be here with Jack and Jerome and to support the proposal that they've got. I will always back our communities, and I'll fight for our region, and I think the Prime Minister knows that I will not leave him alone when I'm onto something, I annoy people very much like a terrier dog I've always had that in me. So I am very proud to be here, and I hope that the people of this region recognise the work that the Albanese Labor Government and give us the opportunity to continue that great work and put me in as their Member for Braddon on the third of May. I'll now hand over to the Prime Minister.
 
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Well, thanks very much, Anne, and a shout out to Jack and Jerome. What a fantastic achievement to coordinate from the grassroots up this amazing proposal for a health care hub right here in Burnie. You'll have the full suite of facilities here, everything from playgroups, family care, domestic violence services, through to pharmacy, pathology, doctors, including of course our Medicare Mental Health Centre, as well as an Urgent Care Centre. This will be an area where people can come and go through different services as well, get advice and which will be a centre for wellbeing is what this is basically. A centre for looking after this community, this fantastic community here in the north west. And I'm so proud that my Government will provide support for this facility.

Could I say about this dynamic person next to me, she can be a terrier. And that is why I firmly asked and asked again and asked again and asked again, I think it was about the fourth discussion that we had about why Anne Urquhart should go from being in the Senate, not up for election this time, be able to sit there and continue the work that she's done as a Whip in the Senate, why she should take, essentially a punt and have a crack at a seat where if you look at the pendulum, it's not the first seat that will fall to Labor that's held by the Coalition, it's eight per cent. But I've been with Anne here in Devonport, in Ulverston, in Penguin, in Strahan, right throughout this entire community and everywhere I have been Anne Urquhart knows people, is respected by people, has fought for people. She's someone who was the delo at Simplot when it was Birds Eye, I think, back in Edgell Birds Eye in the years. They're taking that wonderful Tasmanian produce which goes into frozen veggies that is in demand not just around Australia, not just here on the south island, but on the north island as well, and indeed around the world. It's a fantastic product. But Anne stood up for working people and I can't think it's no accident that we're here today on the day that we have also announced our submission to lift the wages of low income earners, to make that submission to lift wages as well as a tax cut, because we want people to earn more and keep more of what they earn. But we also understand that it's about quality of life and health care matters. I was asked yesterday, ‘you mentioned health care a few times in this campaign. Is it just for a week?’ No, stay tuned. We'll be talking about health right through to May 3, but more importantly than that, we’ll be delivering on health after May 3. And I'll turn to the Health Minister.
 
MARK BUTLER, MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE: Thank you, Prime Minister. Thank you, Anne, for hosting us and for your relentless advocacy for better health care in this part of Tasmania, including this terrific project. When we came to Government, I said that it had never been harder to find a doctor and never more expensive and that is much more pronounced in communities like this the further away you get from the big capital cities. We know and you've told us time and time again, Anne, it's even harder to find a doctor, particularly in communities that frankly have more need of health care because they're a little older than the national average and have a higher incidence of chronic disease like this community does.

And that's why we've been so focused on strengthening Medicare, putting investments in communities like this to bring the price of medicines down and improve access to bulk billed doctor care. Bulk billing has gone up by five per cent in the electorate that Anne is running for because of our record investments in 2023. It's up to 85 per cent now in this community. But we want it to be higher, which is why we announced the record investment in bulk billing a few weeks ago. We've also deployed an Urgent Care Clinic in Devonport that's seen 17,000 members of Anne's community, every single one of whom has been bulk billed. But we want another one on the north west coast. So, there will be another Urgent Care Clinic in Anne’s electorate here in Burnie. There'll be Medicare Mental Health Centres open soon in Devonport and in Burnie as well. It would be terrific to have those services in this hub. A one stop shop for members of this community who can access all sorts of important services and supports, not just purely clinical supports, but a range of other supports that would be delivered by Family Planning Tasmania, a range of other social supports as well. And it really is a testament to Anne's advocacy, but also to Jack and Jerome's vision, to how you can deliver the world's best healthcare in a community like this. As well, we're lifting hospital funding next year by 14 per cent for Tasmania. We were in South Australia yesterday. I said that was going up by 15 per cent. South Australia and Tasmania have been underfunded historically for hospitals and ours is the first government, this is the first Prime Minister to fix that. And every Tasmanian will benefit from that increase of almost $100 million in hospital funding next year. And that's in addition to the funding the Prime Minister agreed with the Premier to establish a heart hospital in Launceston with funding from our Government to the tune of $120 million. We know that northern Tasmanians deserve the best quality health care that the rest of the country is able to rely upon and this Government has been delivering on that.

Contrast that with Peter Dutton's record. He tried to cut a billion dollars from hospital funding in this state. He tried to remove bulk billing altogether. So, far from 85 per cent, it would have been zero per cent if Peter Dutton had got his way and he will do it again. Over the last 24 hours again we've seen Peter Dutton reach into the Republican political playbook and start talking about cutting health care staff just as he was doing ten years ago again. So, a stronger Medicare is more important for a community like this that is dispersed, that is far away from the resources of big cities than any other community in the country. We've got a candidate here in Anne Urquhart who is committed to making sure that every bit of resource can be extracted from commitments from our Government. And this health hub will be just a terrific addition to the services in north west Tas.
 
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks very much.
 
JOURNALIST: The system works. Is your Government preparing to take the United States to the World Trade Organisation if we're hit with more tariffs?
 
PRIME MINISTER: Look, I don’t want to pre-empt the decision that's made by the United States in the coming period. What I can say is that we're prepared for all possibilities going forward. I repeat what I've said before, which is that tariffs are an act of economic self harm on those who impose it. It increases the costs for buyers in the United States of America. The important issue to state as well, I'll make one more thing on top of the comments I've already made on this, is that the United States represents under five per cent of our goods exports around the world. But importantly as well, we will continue to diversify our trade relationships. We do that. We've done that over the last few years not in anticipation of action by the United States but because one of the lessons of the trade issues that were there with China is that we didn't have enough diversification of our trading relationships. We think that free and fair trade is important, but Australia more so than the direct effect of any trade decision by the United States on Australia. The issue, I think, is for global trade and the impact that that will have if the United States takes actions that diminish global growth and diminish global economic activity. That is one of the concerns that we have, is the indirect impact as well.
 
JOURNALIST: The Coalition has already pre-empted or matched a number of the pledges you're making here in Braddon, including this one here for the Burnie Health Hub. Burnie will get it regardless. Why do you think your promises are enough to bridge that 8% gap that you're talking about?
 
PRIME MINISTER: This is the guy who said, along with the Coalition, last time they came into government, there'd be no cuts to health and no cuts to education. They ripped $50 billion out of health. They tried to stop bulk billing altogether when he was the Health Minister. They tried to impose a tax every time people visited a hospital, and they tried to increase the cost of pharmaceuticals, not decrease them. And Peter Dutton, in a moment of candor, under a grilling, I assume - I didn't watch the program on Monday night, said that, essentially, if the Commonwealth doesn't run schools, why do we have an Education Department? He said yesterday, if the Commonwealth doesn't run hospitals, why do we have people working for the Health Department? And this morning on ABC radio, he essentially flagged cuts to the ABC. Now, Tony Abbott, of course, before 2013, said there'd be no cuts to health, no cuts to education, no cuts to the ABC. At least this bloke has kind of told people in a roundabout way. People should be under no illusion. There will be cuts to health, there will be cuts to education, there will be cuts to the ABC if the Coalition are elected.
 
JOURNALIST: The Tasmanian Planning Commission says that Macquarie Point Stadium does not promote urban renewal in Hobart and that the proposed housing is unsuited to the location -
 
PRIME MINISTER: Sorry, who says?
 
JOURNALIST: The Tasmanian Planning Commission in its recent scathing comments of the Hobart Macquarie Point Stadium. Seeing as your $240 million is for urban renewal and housing, are you concerned the stadium fails to meet both of these criteria?
 
PRIME MINISTER: I was the Minister in 2012 that put $50 million into Mac Point for urban renewal. $50 million sat there for a long period of time in the Tasmanian Government's coffers, because that's a site, if you go to it, it's decrepit. Nothing's been done with that extraordinary waterfront site. And what I've seen around our major cities is Barangaroo in Sydney, South Bank, whether you look at Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney or the Elizabeth Quays precinct in Perth, what you've seen is a change from the view of waterways at the time of European settlement, of what were colonies and then cities, waterways was where you put industry because you put everything in there. That's where the effluent goes. That's where everything goes, all the waste. What we have seen in recent times, this century, but at the end of last century, in the last 50 years, is a recognition that our waterfront precincts are precious. I mean, the Derwent is magical. If you come into my office, you'll see a Lloyd Rees painting next to my office, specially requested of the Derwent, one of the last paintings that one of Australia's great artists did and very late in his amazing life. And it is stunning. I have it there because it's just beautiful. The front of the Derwent is Mac Point. It is a wasteland. We need to do something with it. It's been talked about for decades. So, you bet. It can be a great urban site. It could be a mix of commercial activity, residential housing, sporting precinct, arts precinct. It can be dynamic for this great city. There were some people who opposed MONA when it happened. And I remember Three Capes Track, which I got to walk commercially, paid my own way to do it. A couple of years ago, I remember Bob Brown coming around to my office and saying this would be a disaster. It's fantastic. People get to see that beautiful part of Tasmania. And Mac Point as an urban development project is a jewel in the crown of urban redevelopment in Australia.
 
JOURNALIST: Is the funding promised enough to get the centre up and running. And when would you hope to see that?
 
PRIME MINISTER: It is. One of the great benefits of what has happened here is that this has been vacated. This was UTAS, that's been vacated. What it needs is fit out and support and that's why I pay tribute to the people who put this proposal together. This will ensure that it's off and running pretty soon. The funding will be available immediately. We want this hub to be serving people as soon as possible.
 
JOURNALIST: The Health Minister mentioned before the Devonport Urgent Care Clinic. It's currently open 2pm till 9pm, when you initially promised Urgent Care Clinics, the commitment was 8am to 10pm. No care clinics in the state open those hours. Is that still your commitment? Can we expect that those hours to be extended and the care clinic promised in Burnie to have those hours?
 
MINISTER BUTLER: Yeah. I've said, in relation to a number of the 87 Urgent Care Clinics that we've been able to open since we were elected, that we remain committed to the extent of hours that we talked about at the last election. Now, a number of the clinics have had issues sourcing workforce and we're continuing negotiations with them. Very recently, I provided some additional funding to the Launceston Medicare Urgent Care Clinic, that Jerome's also involved in, to extend the hours there. So, this is something we're still very much committed to. They're fully bulk billed. They're all operating seven days a week, public holidays. All of them, as I understand it, open on days like Christmas Day, when if your kid falls off that skateboard you gave them for Christmas, otherwise you'd end up at the hospital emergency department. So, yes, we remain committed. I've been as frank as I possibly can that in a number of those clinics, we've not been able to get from the first day to that span of hours that we committed to, but we're still in negotiations with them to make sure we get there.
 
PRIME MINISTER: We’ll take the reader question.
 
JOURNALIST: It’s actually not a reader question today.
 
PRIME MINISTER: False pretences.
 
JOURNALIST: There’s a couple of examples in Chinese state media that have been praising you, accusing Dutton of beating the drums of war. Do you think this is a sign that you might have gone too easy on the Chinese Government considering multiple incursions into our waters?
 
PRIME MINISTER: I stand up for Australia's national interests. That's what I do each and every day.
 
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, just following up on Greg’s question. So, you're not ruling out action at the World Trade Organisation against the US?
 
PRIME MINISTER: I'm not engaging in hypotheticals. Because if you do that - we're still in discussions.
 
JOURNALIST: There's a report saying the Government your government is preparing -
 
PRIME MINISTER: We're still in discussions with the United States. There'll be plenty of time to respond to whatever the decision is for the United States. And I'll respond after.
 
JOURNALIST: Are you concerned about claims that EPBC Act amendment that you got passed last week do not apply to Macquarie Harbour Salmon Farms? Particularly, your reference to Bob Brown just before.
 
PRIME MINISTER: No. Thanks.
 
ENDS