SENATOR THE HON ANNE RUSTON
SHADOW MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE
DEPUTY LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION IN THE SENATE
SENATOR FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA

TRANSCRIPT

INTERVIEW WITH NIKOLAI BEILHARZ, ABC RADIO ADELAIDE DRIVE

6 March 2026

Topics: Labor’s Urgent Care Clinic broken promises, hospital pressures, $115 million aged care beds announcement

NIKOLAI BEILHARZ: The Federal Opposition says the Government isn’t meeting promised opening hours when it comes to these clinics. The Federal Shadow Minister for Health, South Australian Senator Anne Ruston is with us this afternoon. Senator, thank you for your time.

ANNE RUSTON: My pleasure, Nikolai.

NIKOLAI BEILHARZ: So, what is happening when it comes to opening hours at Urgent Care Clinics in South Australia?

ANNE RUSTON: Well, it’s not just me that is concerned about the fact that these clinics were promised to be open 14 hours a day, seven days a week from 8am until 10pm, it’s actually the Government’s own independent report has found that no clinic in South Australia is open for the hours that was promised. Many of these clinics are not providing the services that they were promising to provide, so whether that be x-rays or pathology. And we found out through this report that South Australia is actually the worst-performing state when it comes to out-of-hours patient care through Urgent Care Clinics. So we’re very concerned that the Urgent Care Clinics in South Australia are not delivering what the Government promised they would deliver. And in that sense, they’re not actually doing what they promised, and that was letting people get access to non-emergency-department care so they don’t end up in emergency departments - because the report also found that they haven’t had any bearing on the wait times that we’re seeing people face in our emergency departments.

NIKOLAI BEILHARZ: What’s your understanding of why some of those clinics haven’t been able to open for as long as was promised?

ANNE RUSTON: Well, it’s quite clear from the report that there are staffing resources that just are not available. And so, what we’ve found is that the Government has made quite a significant promise that it was never going to be able to keep because there were just not the staff, the GPs and the nurses that were able to staff these clinics. So, we’re calling on the Government to say, if you’re going to make a promise to deliver on these, you need to focus on actually delivering that promise, not just saying it.

NIKOLAI BEILHARZ: Why is staying open late so important from your point of view?

ANNE RUSTON: Well, because the whole purpose of the Urgent Care Clinics was to take pressure off our overburdened emergency departments in our hospitals. And I think, you know, your listeners would be well aware of the fact that we have got the worst ramping that we’ve ever seen in South Australia at the moment, and another 100,000 hours of additional ramped people. That’s ramped patients, ramped ambos, ramped sick people. And so, what we’re saying is that if you aren’t open for after-hours, then there is no other alternative apart from turning up to the emergency department. These particular clinics were supposed to take pressure off the emergency departments by being open for significantly longer hours than your local GP.

NIKOLAI BEILHARZ: We did ask to speak to the Minister for Health, Mark Butler. He wasn’t available. He has made some comments about this though, saying that this model of care has seen 2.6 million Australians so far, most of whom would otherwise have gone to emergency departments, and that while they’re not open the full 14 hours, they’ve asked them to move towards that. Some are open for 12, so 8am to 8pm. Is that fair enough given that this is a relatively new idea that it’s going to have some growing pains?

ANNE RUSTON: Well, first of all, I think the Minister’s been a little generous in his interpretation of most of the people turning up at Urgent Care Clinics would otherwise have turned up at emergency departments. I think that is probably pretty much of a stretch when we’re talking about telling the truth. The other thing is just about - do not make promises to Australians that you can’t keep. The Minister knew at the time he made these promises that we had severe workforce challenges and they remain here today. I mean, it’s great to see, actually, Ashton Hurn’s come out with some quite significant workforce initiatives that she’s promising should she be successful in winning the government here in South Australia. Because unless you actually deal with the issue that is underpinning all this, and that is workforce challenges, we cannot possibly solve for all of these promises that are being made and the Minister knew that when he made the promise.

NIKOLAI BEILHARZ: I know you just mentioned Ashton Hurn at the state level, but if staff shortages are at the core of this, at the federal level, if you were in power, what would you be doing to make those opening hours increase?

ANNE RUSTON: Well, the first thing we’ve got to do is to make sure that we have got more doctors, more nurses, more allied health workers, basically more health professionals that are able to support the primary care needs of Australians, because there is nothing that is more important than Australians being able to get timely and easy and affordable access to primary care. So you’ve really got two choices. You can either train more professionals in Australia, and one of the things that we took to the last election was a policy that would have seen end-to-end increases in training and support for our junior doctors and our nurses to make sure that we were growing our own supply of doctors and nurses. But we also need to make sure that we’ve got fast-tracked safe ways to get overseas trained doctors and nurses into the country. Because as we sit here right now, we have such a critical shortage, which is why it’s so hard to get into your GP, which is why we’re seeing in rural and regional areas it’s so much more difficult to get access to primary care. We have to be focusing on every single lever, not just making big headline promises.

NIKOLAI BEILHARZ: On the training on the home front though, the reality is that that takes time, right? Like even if you did that right now, you wouldn’t see the results of it for some time.

ANNE RUSTON: Well, we’re really pleased, actually, this year, we’ve seen the first graduates from our rural training schools, the medical school that we set up when we were in government to train doctors in the regions, because we know doctors who train in the regions are more likely to stay in the regions. So we set up the Murray-Darling Medical Training School when we’re in government and we’re now seeing the first lot of graduates come out of that program and actually start operating in our communities. You’re right, it takes a long time. Some of these things are already in train, but we need more of them. And whilst we’re waiting for them to come through, we need to be supplementing our workforce with overseas-trained professionals.

NIKOLAI BEILHARZ: 14 past four is the time, you’re on 891 ABC Adelaide, hearing from the Federal Shadow Minister for Health, Senator Anne Ruston. Renee from Crafers has been in touch with us. Renee, what did you want to mention?

RENEE: I just wanted to mention, uh, Nikolai, that there’s another huge resource out there that is available that could have these centres open longer. I read a recent report that there are hundreds and hundreds of qualified nurse practitioners, these are registered nurses that have done extra qualifications, extra training, and they’re advanced practice practitioners, who can actually run these urgent care centres and do in some work independently. Unfortunately, the Federal Government contract for these urgent care centres has a requirement that the providers of these centres, which are mostly private companies, must ensure there is a GP on site at all times. So whilst we’ve got this huge untapped workforce of nurse practitioners that could have a massive impact on providing care and reducing waiting time and giving people the urgent care they need, things like doing sutures, ordering basic x-rays, all those sorts of things that nurse practitioners are qualified and accredited to do, they can’t actually do because the Federal Government is requiring that there must be a GP on site at all times, even though legally and professionally that’s not required.

NIKOLAI BEILHARZ: Renee, thank you very much for your comments. Senator, can I put Renee’s thoughts to you? Is there a role that nurse practitioners could have a higher level of responsibility or do you see that there is a need for a GP on site?

ANNE RUSTON: Well, there often is a need for a GP, but she makes a very, very good point, and that is we have got so many amazingly highly trained medical professionals that are not doctors that we need to be using to the top of their scope. I mean, this government actually did a review into scope of practice to make sure that our pharmacists who are often in rural towns the only medical person in town, their nurse practitioners, their nurse prescribers, our allied health workers - we’ve got to make that every single one of our health professionals is working at the top of their scope, so that we are maximising the resources that we’ve got out there. But there are so many handbrakes, there’s so many barriers, there’s many rules and regulations that the Government keeps putting in the way and stopping people like nurse practitioners being able to maximise the skills and the training they have, which are quite exceptional.

NIKOLAI BEILHARZ: Senator, before you go, later on this afternoon we’ll be speaking with Sam Rae, who’s the Federal Minister for Aged Care. The Federal Government today has announced $115 million towards aged care beds at a number of facilities. One of those hotspots, as they describe them, is here in Adelaide, so the expectation is about $30 million will go towards aged care beds in South Australia. How much of a difference will that make when it comes to some of the pressures that we see on the health system as well?

ANNE RUSTON: It’ll be a drop in the ocean. But the really disappointing thing is the failure of the Government to actually admit that in the 2023-24 budget, they cut $2.2 billion out of aged care beds, which meant thousands and thousands of aged care beds that would have otherwise been delivered by federal funding were not able to be delivered. So, I think it is incredible that the Government would think that announcing $115 million and calling it a win when they actually took $2.2 billion of savings out of the 2023-24 budget - I mean, the failure is so much, much bigger than the measly $115 million they’re providing today. This is a crisis that has been a long time coming. We don’t have enough aged care home care packages. We saw last year 800 new beds in aged care across the country. We need 10,000 every year for the next 10 years. I’m somewhat sceptical that we see the Minister coming out and announcing $115 million today, two weeks out from the state election.

NIKOLAI BEILHARZ: Anne Ruston, thank you for your time this afternoon.

ANNE RUSTON: My pleasure, thank you.

ENDS