Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to raise a grievance on behalf of my constituents regarding access to health services and doctors within the electorate of Paterson. It is important to note the Rudd Labor government’s broken promises and overall track record when it comes to health. The government has only delivered three fully operational superclinics out of a promised 36 since December 2007, and yet it has now announced another 23 GP superclinics in the budget. The Rudd Labor government also promised 7,750 nurses, but only 617 were recruited in two years. The Prime Minister promised to have hospitals fixed by mid-2009 and we are not one day closer to them being fixed.

For the constituents of Paterson, it is sad to see that this is a government that continues to overpromise and underdeliver when it comes to health. The Prime Minister has failed in his commitment to take control of health from the states. He has rolled over and thrown billions upon billions of dollars at the states in added levels of bureaucracy, rather than what the people of Paterson really need: more beds, more doctors, more nurses, more services.

Only today in question time the Minister for Health and Ageing mocked my commitment and support for two fine doctors who have moved to my electorate to manage the new GP superclinic at Nelson Bay. Politics aside, both Dr Warwick Yonge and Dr George Manoliadis are hardworking doctors who want the best for the community in which they work. They want to provide the best medical services to the community. Warwick and I have had many discussions over the years regarding the lack of bulk-billing services and the severe doctor shortages in the community, which have in turn lowered competition and led to a rise in consultation fees.

I will not begrudge them making a difference to the lives of those who live in the Nelson Bay area. My grievance regarding the GP superclinic is its location. I have said from the outset, including at the Hunter New England Area Health Service planning forums for the clinic, that I believe Nelson Bay is the incorrect location for this first clinic to be placed, especially when there is a greater community need in locations such as Medowie and the Tilligerry Peninsula. Medowie and the Tilligerry Peninsula are in desperate need of additional doctors and facilities. I have been informed that all the clinics in Medowie and the Tilligerry Peninsula have closed their books and are not taking any further patients. With public transport a challenge, constituents who live in the area need to travel long distances for their doctor services.

Back in November 2009, I highlighted the case of Mr Bill Seoullis. Bill moved to Mallabula from Sydney with his wife, Carol, three years ago. Bill has a heart condition and needs to see a GP on regular basis. Bill contacted four doctors surgeries on the Tilligerry Peninsula, but none would accept Bill onto their books as the number of patients they serviced was at capacity for the doctors available. I recently caught up with Bill, who indicated that he is still not able to get into surgeries on the Tilligerry Peninsula and is looking at other options.

The issue of age is concerning when taking into account local residents and their needs as patients. Much of my electorate, in particular the Port Stephens and the Forster-Tuncurry areas, are popular amongst retirees and, therefore, a large proportion of my constituents are elderly, and this number is expected to grow. GPAccess chief executive, Mark Foster, has explained that the elderly need triple the care of younger people. In Paterson, where the number of elderly is already high and is still growing, this means the number of patients demanding medical services is climbing at an exceptional rate. Take, for example, the need for dialysis units within the Paterson electorate, in particular the Port Stephens area. I have been advocating for this service for a long time. Currently 13 patients in Port Stephens are being transported to Maitland Hospital and John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle. One of those is Mr Allan Wilson from Salamander Bay. Allan requires dialysis treatment three times per week at the John Hunter Hospital. This trip takes approximately two hours door-to-door for him. As Allan is quite ill he is unable to drive himself and he does not have a carer who can drive him. He currently utilises the wonderful services of Community Transport Group of Port Stephens to ensure he makes his medical appointments. If this transport service is unavailable then Allan needs to rely on ambulance transport to and from his medical appointments. Firstly, a trip in an ambulance is very uncomfortable and, secondly, if an ambulance is not available to take him home, wait time for Allan can be anywhere from four to seven hours. This in turn makes an already long trip into a very full day trip. It would be much easier for Allan and others in the area if there were dialysis facilities available closer to home, such as the Tomaree hospital.

I would also like to highlight Raymond Terrace, another area of significant medical and other healthcare workforce shortages in my electorate, particularly in the discipline of general practice. It is important to highlight two doctors, Dr Chris Boyle and Dr Damien Wellbourne, who run and manage the Raymond Terrace Family Practice. Raymond Terrace family health practice has a long history of providing quality medical care to the Raymond Terrace community, along with training for medical students and GP registrars. As the population and throughput of the practice increases, rooms used for teaching in the existing facility have had to be relocated for health service delivery. In recent years the number of students and registrars accommodated at the practice has had to be reduced, despite the availability and willingness of GP supervisors. That is why I am glad to see that plans for a one-stop health clinic—HealthOne Raymond Terrace—is back on the agenda more than three years after it was first promised by the New South Wales Labor government.

The HealthOne Raymond Terrace project proposes the construction of a new healthcare facility in Raymond Terrace, providing quality integrated primary health services. The new facility will be developed adjacent to the Raymond Terrace central business district. HealthOne Raymond Terrace will utilise an integrated primary and community healthcare model to ensure the effectiveness and sustainability of local health services into the future. A significant component of the model of care will be the clinical teaching and training of medical, under and postgraduates and other health professional undergraduates of the University of Newcastle, the University of New England and universities in other locations.

The HealthOne clinic will be a purpose-built facility and will provide GP and other specialist services, including, but not limited to, preventative care and allied health services, including speech pathology, physiotherapy, nutritional services, social work and psychology counselling services. The clinic will also deliver specialist services such as women’s health, mental health, drug and alcohol, palliative care nursing, Aboriginal health, sexual health, sexual assault and child protection. This project greatly expands the clinical service delivery capacity of Raymond Terrace Family Practice. It also is a goal to restore and expand the clinical teaching capacity at the practice. It is wonderful to see GPAccess, Raymond Terrace Family Practice and Port Stephens Council working together to ensure this clinic comes to fruition and services the Raymond Terrace community. I am proud to be the member for Paterson and support local initiatives to ensure access to doctors and health services are maintained and grown.

It astounds me that the Rudd Labor government has failed to put a real plan into place. In 2007 our Prime Minister looked into the eyes of Australians and promised to fix their health system. Now, after three years of failed benchmarks, underfunding and broken promises, the Prime Minister has finally decided to do something. Ironically, in an election year Mr Rudd has decided to take some action. Clearly this is policy on the run, and sadly, after all this time, he has still not managed to get it right. Mr Rudd went into the election promising he would fix the health system. Not only did he fail to deliver on this promise; he has wasted billions of dollars on the BER, insulation and the climate change department, which sits idle. This money could have been spent on fixing the health system.

The Prime Minister’s ongoing modus operandi is to manage perception. His priority is clearly to be seen to be doing something through tricky media manipulation and photo opportunities rather than actually doing anything. We saw him in a hard hat on school building sites and we got the school halls rip-off. We saw him roll up his sleeves and head out onto the Parliament House lawn with his notepad to apologise to industry over the home insulation debacle and say that he would fix it, but they got nothing. We saw him stalking unsuspecting patients in public hospital wards, promising a better health system, but we got another layer of bureaucracy at considerable expense to the Australian taxpayer. We got no new doctors, no new beds and no new nurses.

My commitment to my constituents in Paterson, whom I have the honour and privilege to represent in this House, is to stand up for increased health services within the region, and if the minister, as she did today, tries to ridicule me for that then so be it, because nothing will stop me standing up for better service delivery in my electorate. The health of a community is critically important. It is something we have worked very hard at in the electorate of Paterson. When I was first elected as the member for Paterson, there were just over 530 aged-care beds. At the last election, there were over 1,500 aged-care beds, and the future projections are that that will not be enough to cope. I have a rapidly ageing electorate—a very large number of aged people—and along with that comes the need for even more GP services to service those in aged-care facilities. There is no point in building aged-care facilities if you do not have the doctors and healthcare professionals to service them in that location.

In a very large regional electorate where the towns are many kilometres apart, it is unrealistic for doctors to travel into smaller regional towns to service aged-care facilities. That might suit the needs of some, and that is why we are having a centralisation of aged-care facilities in the major population centres, but more needs to be done. More services need to be provided. The increase of diabetes will lead to more people requiring dialysis in the long term. These are issues that my constituents have raised. That is why I have raised them as part of the grievance debate tonight.

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