: Welcome everyone. Another busy day today, as we've said, in the work that you have before us, and the work of government continues each and every day, and I want to thank everyone for the efforts that everyone is making. In the last couple of weeks, we've had big announcements on Medicare, three big ones.
Firstly, the more than half a billion dollars to assist women's reproductive health, and on Saturday - March 1 - came in the first new listings of contraceptive pills in some 30 years, making an enormous difference as well. For some of these, they were recommended by doctors to women as being appropriate for their healthcare, and that's why these changes are so important, as well as acknowledging the importance of issues such as menopause and dealing with that as a health issue going forward.
Secondly, of course, we had the big announcement of Medicare bulk billing, the tripling of the bulk billing incentive for all 27 million Australians on top of the 11 million Australians who received the tripling of the bulk billing incentive. Now we know that that resulted in 90 per cent of those people being bulk billed, and that that was important going forward. So, on top of that, the additional training for doctors and nurses.
And then yesterday, we had the announcement of 50 additional Medicare Urgent Care Clinics. Now, what that means in practice is that four out of every five Australians will be able to drive 20 minutes or less to get to a Medicare Urgent Care Clinic. Already, one million Australians have received this support, and we had the rather astonishing decision by the Coalition that they're going to get out the colour coded spreadsheet and they're going to support just four of the 50 that we announced. Now we didn't of course, do that in a partisan way. We think that every Australian deserves access to the best healthcare, not based upon the margin of the electorate that they live in, but based upon the Australian ethos. We don't need an Americanisation of our health system. We should be proud that Australia has created Medicare, and as much as Peter Dutton tried his best to undermine it, of course, wanted to abolish bulk billing when he was Health Minister by bringing in a GP tax. We resisted that. We resisted the tax on every time people visited an emergency department, and the increased tax on pharmaceuticals that he wanted as well. Medicare is a part of who we are. Labor created Medicare, and we will always strengthen it and look to ensure that it doesn't just continue, but indeed is made stronger during our next term of government.
I spoke with Premier Crisafulli yesterday, and Minister McAllister has also been engaged with the Premier. I spoke to him yesterday as well. The Cyclone Alfred off the coast is a very real threat in South East Queensland. We hope, of course, for the best outcome possible, but we will stand with Queenslanders at this difficult time, and we'll continue to provide support, just as we have for the impact of the floods that have had a devastating impact in North Queensland as well. There, we have signed off on building back better as well, not just rebuilding what was there on the Bruce Highway, making sure that we build back better. That we fix the Kennedy Highway as well, complete the full asphalting. There's 10 kilometres of that road that was so important to get services and goods into Cairns and to North Queensland. We'll make sure that that job, which we started in government a long time ago, gets completed after the neglect that we inherited.
People would also be aware of the Government's strong statements that we have made in support of Ukraine. We regard this as an issue of doing what's right, but also what is in Australia's national interest. The brave people of Ukraine, led so extraordinarily by President Zelenskyy, are fighting not just for their national sovereignty and for their democracy. They are fighting for the international rule of law. And it is an easy choice that Australia has made. It's a bipartisan position that Australia has had. We've contributed one and a half billion dollars of support, $1.3 billion of which is military support. We continue, as well, to monitor the Chinese ships that are in international waters around Australia. HMAS Stuart and HMAS Warramunga, as well as P-8s will continue to monitor what is going on there. It stands in stark contrast with what happened prior to 2022 where there were ships - or there was a ship, a surveillance ship - off the Western Australian coast that had no monitoring. And of course, I commented yesterday that Scott Morrison was out there making comments about this. Well, there were ships that were noticed and monitored because they were in Sydney Harbour, docked at Garden Island when he was the Prime Minister. We'll continue to respond in an appropriate way, and we'll continue to monitor there. I have every faith in our Australian Defence Force to make sure they get that done. So I look forward to dealing with our big agenda here this morning. Thank you.
