Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Okay. We have a federal Minister for Indigenous Health, Rural and Regional Health and Regional Services Delivery. We did not have that before and that in itself speaks volumes. It is not just the name; he is a minister who is actually out and about in rural and regional Australia, and is coming to my electorate of Page—not that I am verballing. I cannot complain; I have had many visits. We have an Office of Rural Health. We did not have an Office of Rural Health before, and it is in Canberra. Normally I would say that is not a good thing but it is a good thing because health at an Australian government level needs to be here. It has brought together a whole range of programs—in fact, about 60—that were dispersed all over the place without any cogent plan around them.

We are putting more money into the Australian Health Care Agreement. I know the honourable member for Lyne in moving this motion was not attacking and was doing it as a supportive motion, but I do have to say that under the Australian Health Care Agreement the previous government—and the minister at the time was the honourable member for Warringah—ripped out a billion dollars plus some more. It would take me more than my five minutes to go through them all. The previous government froze GP training places. I know there are issues to do with provider numbers, as the honourable member for Kennedy said, but it is the freezing of GP training places that created this backlog. It is a problem that has started to unfreeze but it will take years for that to kick in.

We are delivering more training to regional centres and through various universities, particularly the university department of rural health in my area. The honourable member for Lyne and I share the North Coast Area Health Service and other health services. This is the same with the honourable member for New England. We have a border and we share Urbenville. We got money for the Urbenville medical clinic in the budget—nearly $300,000—so that we could keep the two GPs there. That was in the last budget. There is reform, such as the $560 million available for regional cancer care centres. From our area there are two submissions that have gone up. The honourable member for Lyne and I know about both of those and we hope that they get up.

The member for Lyne also talked in his contribution about the community packages and the aged people in hospitals who do not need to be there. I stand to be corrected, but I think that nearly 2,000 people nationally may be in hospitals who do not need to be there. It is a long-term problem and it has not been addressed before, but I do know that 12,000 new aged-care places have been allocated and that will go some way to start dealing with that problem. First, those people should not be in the hospital; second, it is not the appropriate care; and, third, it uses the wrong resources.

The member for Lyne talked about RDF. I made a submission to the Garling inquiry on that very issue, so I am in agreement with him there. Whatever happens, and we are going to see reform in health, we need RDF to kick in according to the formula as it is. So I am in complete agreement on that point.

The other issue is the Bennett report and the 123 recommendations which are being worked through now for the major health reform. That work actually shows that one’s postcode makes a difference to one’s health outcome. That is a critical issue for rural and regional Australia and it is one that we have all turned our minds to in order to correct.

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