Mark Butler confident all 58 urgent care clinics will be open this year
The health minister denies he's 'running out of overs' to deliver the promised centres.
The Minister for Health and Aged Care has mounted a spirited defence against claims the GP urgent care clinic rollout is behind schedule, saying the delivery “passes the pub test”.
An ABC News report last week said that fewer than half of the 58 promised urgent care clinics were open, months after what the article claimed was the deadline: 1 July.
It said 10 of the 23 open clinics were set up by the Victorian Government and then rolled into the federal initiative, opening hours were inconsistent and most open clinics were in Labor-voting electorates.
But Mark Butler took to radio to defend the government’s record, saying the promise was that the clinics would be open over the course of the 2023/24 financial year, not by 1 July.
