Check against delivery
I want to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we're gathered, the Ngunnawal and Ngambri Peoples.
I pay my respects to Elders past and present and I also acknowledge First Nations people joining us today.
I'd also like to pay tribute to all our finalists for the Stronger Medicare Awards.
Thank you for making the effort to be here tonight - I know some of you have had to travel quite a distance and make special arrangements to be here.
But I am glad you have, so we can honour you in person.
I would also like to thank our panel of experts who are all primary care and consumer champions in their own right.
They had the unenviable task of whittling 140 incredible nominations down to just 37 finalists, and then narrowing the field down further, to just 20 Medicare Champions.
My thanks to:
- Karen Booth
- Dr Eleanor Chew
- Dr Elizabeth Deveny
- Dr Walid Jammal, and
- Lori-Anne Sharp
Thank you also to the staff at the Department of Health and Aged Care for their hard work in making the Stronger Medicare Awards and this evening's celebration such a success.
This is the first year we're holding the Stronger Medicare Awards.
We set up these awards as part of our efforts to mark 40 years of Medicare, which had its 40th birthday in February this year.
When Medicare was introduced by the Hawke Government it changed the nation.
Before the 1st of February 1984, 1 in 7 Australians did not have health coverage.
The leading cause of personal bankruptcies was unpaid health and hospital bills.
After the 1st of February 1984, they stopped measuring that as a cause of bankruptcy, because it disappeared overnight. It simply disappeared.
And you - the primary health care professionals that give your all - are the beating heart of Medicare.
Without you, Medicare is little more than an idea.
As Minister for Health and Aged Care, I know more than anyone that our Medicare system is nothing without the nationwide team of health professionals that give their time, their expertise and their skill, to keep us healthy and out of hospital.
Every week I meet passionate and dedicated health practitioners.
In Urgent Care Clinics and GP practices, community health centres and ACCHOs, pharmacies and allied health practices, and so many other setting besides.
It is one of the greatest privileges I have, to meet and talk with so many workers across our incredible - and incredibly diverse - primary care sector.
We launched the Stronger Medicare Awards to celebrate 40 years of Medicare and the workers that make it what it is today.
It is clear to me, as I'm sure it is to all of you, that we urgently need to challenge the misconceptions out there in community about primary care, to show careers in this sector are diverse, dynamic and rewarding.
Even the term "primary care" isn't well understood, by the public or by the health profession.
Misconceptions abound.
One of my great focusses since returning to the portfolio as Health Minister has been to elevate the profile and importance of general practice and primary care.
We need to raise the aspiration of junior doctors to see themselves in general practice just as we need to raise the aspiration of nurses, midwives and every other health professional to see themselves in primary care.
Primary care roles are challenging, highly skilled, and incredibly diverse.
You can have a greater impact on your patients, your community and your country than the more procedural specialties and acute settings.
Because you see your patients month after month, year after year.
You don't just treat a short-term sickness, you treat a person holistically.
You see that person grow up and become a parent, you may see their kids grow up too. And as you do, you change their lives for the better.
Which is why these awards are just so important, because they are one more way that we elevate primary care roles and recognise them for the challenging, diverse and impactful roles that they are.
Tonight I can announce that we are continuing that important work, by developing the first ever workforce campaign from the Australian Government targeted specifically at primary care.
It seems incredible to me that there has never been a primary care workforce campaign, considering how important this sector is.
Development of that campaign is underway right now.
It will fight those tired misconceptions and raise the profile of GPs, nurses, midwives allied health professionals, First Nations health practitioners and every role in between.
So thank you to all the finalists and Medicare Champions, for being inspirational models for primary care … examples of just the kinds of incredible professionals that make primary care - and Medicare - what they are today.
Thank you.
