Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Mental Health and Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Makin for his question. There are two unique characteristics about Australia's health workforce. First, it is growing and it will continue to grow for decades to come. Today, for example, the aged-care workforce numbers about 300,000 and this will grow to fully 900,000 over the next four decades, accounting then for one in 20 workers. The second point is that government in this area has a particular responsibility to ensure that that increase in demand is matched by an adequate supply. No government has ever recognised that responsibility like this government. This year alone we will spend more $1 billion on health workforce measures, compared, for example, to just $142 million in 2006-07.

When we came to government we were confronted with very significant workforce shortages in health and some of those shortages were the result of truly bizarre thinking. We inherited a cap on the number of GPs trained each year at 600, a cap in place for the entirety of the Leader of the Opposition's time as Minister for Health and Ageing. Apparently, it was thought by some that constraining the number of Australian trained GPs would limit demand on Medicare, that Australians would be good enough not to get sick so much. Unsurprisingly, this particular approach to the laws of supply and demand in health did not work. Instead, communities across the country ran into doctor shortages and began to rely heavily on GPs brought in from overseas. This government smashed that cap. Under this government, the number of GPs trained increases every year and will reach 1,200 by 2014, delivering 5½ thousand more Australian trained GPs than would have been delivered under the old system.

On coming to government, we confronted a nursing shortage; so we acted. This year, 42,000 nurses are in training, a 21 per cent increase on 2007. The extra graduate numbers have allowed Australia's hospitals system to employ 2,000 more nurses in the past year alone. On coming to government, we confronted a shortage of specialists; so we acted. In 2007, there were just 51 training places for new specialists across the whole of Australia. This year there are 518, a tenfold increase, including 96 in psychiatry alone.

On coming to government, we confronted a broad shortage of health workers in rural and regional Australia; so again we acted. We directed 50 per cent of the additional GP training places and similar numbers of the specialist training places to rural and regional Australia. We overhauled the old incentives program that was based on population data from 18 years ago. Under our new program, 500 communities are eligible for incentives, providing incentive payments to 2,400 additional doctors and registrars for the first time. In its first year, doctor numbers have increased by 4.4 per cent in rural and regional Australia and by almost nine per cent in our most remote communities.

When I talk to people in the health and the aged-care sectors about meeting current and future demand for a quality workforce I can be clear what they do not do: they do not pull out the latest back-to-the-future speech by Peter Reith and argue the case for—you guessed it—Work Choices. They talk instead—

See this speech in context