Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

For a number of years, I have raised the issue of the critical, life-threatening shortage of doctors in the Shortland electorate in this parliament and with the Minister for Health and Ageing, yet nothing changes. Both the Central Coast and Lake Macquarie areas of the Shortland electorate are identified—and have been for some time—as areas of workforce shortages, but things do not improve. They just get worse and worse.

In 2002, I raised the issue that on the Central Coast and in the Lake Macquarie area people were waiting seven to 14 days to see a doctor, and I presented to parliament some 6,000-odd signatures requesting that more doctors be trained and that this chronic shortage of doctors be addressed. In the first parliament I was part of in Canberra, I raised in the House of Representatives the issue of trying to get an overseas-trained doctor to practise in the Toukley area, which was identified as an area of shortage. It did not happen, and the issue of the workforce shortage has just got worse and worse.

In February 2005, the ratio of full-time equivalent general practitioners to patients on the Central Coast was one to 1,998. In the one postcode in Shortland at that time, postcode 2262, there was one doctor to 9,801 people. That really is not good enough. The doctor shortage has not been addressed, and it has just got worse and worse, and the areas that were previously well serviced by doctors are now at a stage where there is a critical shortage of doctors there too. Last year, in one of the areas that was better served by doctors, we lost three doctors, and another three doctors have signalled that they are going to retire in the very near future.

In January this year, Dr Thind, who had two surgeries and had practised for 20 years in the Blacksmiths and Marks Point area, an area that was already suffering from a chronic shortage of doctors, notified us that he was retiring. He gave plenty of notice. I wrote to the minister for health to seek assistance in addressing the issue. I wrote to the department. I even got on the telephone and rang around, trying to get doctors to relocate in the area. It is classified as an area of workforce shortage, but unfortunately its RRMA classification is not such that an overseas trained doctor who is a permanent resident in Australia can actually relocate to the area.

I have found a number of doctors who are very keen to move to Lake Macquarie, to the area where Dr Thind previously practised, but they do not meet the department’s requirements. I have to say that it is very difficult to find out exactly what those requirements are. I received a letter from the department saying that no-one had applied to move to the area. Every doctor that inquired was told, ‘No, you don’t qualify,’ so they did not put in a formal application to move to the area.

I received a letter on 20 January from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health and Ageing, in response to my letter to the minister for health in December. The letter I received said that he was pleased to advise me that the area was identified as an area of workforce shortage. Yes, it is identified as an area of workforce shortage, but that does not help the people of the area. There are no doctors in Belmont, Swansea, Blacksmiths or Pelican who will take new patients. All the doctors’ books are closed—that is some 17 doctors—so it is a real crisis.

In support of what I am saying in the House tonight, I would like to table petitions that do not meet the requirement of the House from some 1,000 petitioners in my electorate, asking for assistance to find a replacement doctor for Dr Thind, who has now closed his doors. There are now 2,000 families in the Lake Macquarie area who no longer have a doctor, because no doctor will take them on as patients, because their books are all closed. (Time expired)

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