Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise in support of the Health Insurance Amendment (National Rural Health Commissioner) Bill 2017. It is important legislation to get Australia's first national rural health commissioner off the ground, as a valuable advocate for regional and rural health. This bill delivers on our commitment from the 2016 election and, yet again, demonstrates how the Turnbull government is committed to addressing access to health services in rural and remote Australia. The rural health commissioner will work with communities, training colleges, universities, the health sector and all levels of government to improve rural health policies. A well-trained local health expert located in rural and remote towns in many cases forms the heartbeat of local health care for small communities around Australia. A national rural health commissioner will be their champion.

The coalition government is providing $4.4 million to establish the new commissioner, who will act as an independent statutory office holder with duties directed by the minister responsible for rural health. I am pleased to see that addressing the issue of workforce distribution in regional and rural areas is a key priority for the commissioner. It is this particular issue that I would like to focus on in my remaining time, as it is absolutely critical in my electorate of Robertson.

As I raised in the House just recently, this has been an issue that I have been fighting for on behalf of our local community since well before I became the member for Robertson in 2013. After years of inaction from Labor, who simply failed over six years of representing Robertson, to understand or address this emerging problem, the coalition made it part of our growth plan for the Central Coast in the lead-up to the 2013 election. By pledging to look into the unique circumstances facing our region in attracting and retaining GPs, we took the first step in acknowledging that more needed to be done. When we looked into it, it emerged that part of the problem was that the District of Workforce Shortage system, known as DWS, was actually using old data from 2004. Thanks to the coalition government, we made long-awaited changes to the DWS calculations so that now the most up-to-date data is used to more accurately identify areas where there is a doctor shortage. For those areas with DWS status, it then becomes easier to attract and recruit GPs to help meet that need.

Twenty-six suburbs in my electorate of Robertson were given DWS status, including Avoca Beach, Copacabana, Davistown, Empire Bay, Erina, Green Point, Killcare, Kincumber, Saratoga, Terrigal and Wagstaffe. This has helped people living in these suburbs enormously. Yet, as I said in my last speech on this issue, these changes did not include Umina Beach, Patonga, Ettalong Beach, Woy Woy or other suburbs in the peninsula region.

The DWS may not turn out to be the silver bullet that tackles this issue in the most appropriate way for residents on the peninsula, but one thing is clear: something needs to be done, and something needs to be done quickly. Local residents like Nicole from Umina Beach told me it took her two years to be able to access a local doctor on the Peninsula, and she has said it can now take her two weeks just to get an appointment. A local GP, Dr Ray Martin, told me the issue was 'past crisis point'.

Armed with these alarming stories, I approached the Minister for Health and the Assistant Minister for Health, who is the minister responsible for the health workforce. I invited the assistant minister to hear firsthand from the people in our electorate who were being hit the hardest. I am pleased to report that the visit happened last week and that we received an overwhelming response, and I note the presence of the assistant minister in the House this afternoon. With less than a week's notice, around a hundred residents and local doctors attended a community forum at Jasmine Greens Park Kiosk cafe in Umina. It was standing room only, as locals packed in to hear this issue addressed. Bob and Judy from Woy Woy were right when they said to me afterwards, 'Wow, what a turnout.' It really was standing room only. Another attendee, Sue, said she, 'thoroughly enjoyed this morning's discussion about the health crisis on the Peninsula', and yet she said, 'I'm really distressed for the doctors and how hard they are working to meet the needs for us locals.' We heard from people like Kim, who shared her story about how frustrating it was for her to try to find a doctor for her elderly mother, who suffers from dementia. Kim said she approached 36 doctors located on the Peninsula, all without success. Thankfully, she eventually found a GP who was able to see her mother, but they are based at Green Point, more than 20 minutes away, and Green Point is actually one of the suburbs whose DWS listing, which the coalition government obtained, enabled more GPs to be recruited to the area. We also heard from local health professionals like Dr Paul Duff, a respected local GP, who helped many of us understand some of the background to the doctor shortage problem and why it needs to be addressed.

The local primary health network—Hunter, New England and Central Coast Primary Health Network—has done some significant work in helping us understand this state of play, with up-to-date data on Peninsula general practices to assess and evaluate the workforce. Their findings confirm that a high proportion of GPs in the region are at or nearing retirement age, both in the community and in aged-care facilities. This lack of a younger GP workforce, and very few GP registrars, means there could be a risk of a large, vulnerable and ageing patient population on the Peninsula having limited access to a GP in the near future. These GPs, as we heard at our forum on Friday, are dedicated, committed and passionate about helping families and local residents right across the Central Coast. But it is simply unacceptable that, at a time when bulk-billing rates are at record highs of around 90 per cent in my electorate of Robertson, many GP practice books are closed. In the case of Dr Martin, when his practice closes down later this month, there will be around 1,200 patients looking for a new GP. The PHN data revealed that there is an active patient population of more than 35,000 in the Peninsula area, with around 34 GPs across 10 general practices, including a skin cancer clinic. Sixteen of these 34 GPs are over 61 years of age, and along with one of these doctors retiring, another is reducing their hours. Furthermore, the minister's office advised that 20 per cent of people in the Robertson electorate are 65 years of age or older, compared to the national average of almost 15 per cent.

The government does not and cannot hire, move or direct doctors, but we are listening closely to the heartbeat of my community, and this conversation is the start of genuine and much-needed action to tackle this urgent problem. After the forum that we hosted at Umina, we then hosted a roundtable with experts from International Medical Recruitment and key community advocates. We heard from representatives from the Central Coast Local Health District, PHN CEO Richard Nankervis and the University of Newcastle. The University of Newcastle is a key player in this conversation through its lead in developing the Central Coast Medical School and Medical Research Institute. This institute and medical school will operate as a branch faculty of the University of Newcastle and will provide additional medical students and young doctors when it becomes operational. The federal government has committed $32.5 million to the medical school, which will be co-located with Gosford Hospital, delivering hundreds of new jobs, along with education, health innovation and excellence.

This is a game changer that will form part of our long-term solution, but I would like to quickly return to the immediate issue of getting more doctors into the Peninsula as soon as possible. Importantly, we are committed to working together to find a solution to this critical shortage. One of the central resolutions that emerged from the discussion on Friday was to leverage the work already being done by the PHN. Following the roundtable with stakeholders in West Gosford and with the assistant minister, we were able to announce a fresh collaboration with GP Synergy, the regional training organisation responsible for the placement of registrars in the area. This will equip and enable the development of strategies to increase GP registrar numbers on the Peninsula and to assess the number of GPs able to provide supervision and mentorship to medical students. There will also be a renewed focus on evaluating and supporting GP succession planning, to make sure that we are not in this situation in the long term. Finally, a commitment has been made to do everything we can to keep the community up to date. This includes circulating information to the broader Central Coast PHN regions to raise awareness and to encourage the potential relocation of doctors from GP regions that are more densely populated. These commitments will only be the start, and there is more to be done.

But can I say, this is much, much more than was ever achieved during the six years of Labor that we endured on the Central Coast. Labor senator Deborah O'Neill, a former one-term member for Robertson, and her predecessor, Belinda Neal, simply failed to address this issue. Yet all we have heard from Senator O'Neill locally are complaints, with no sign of wanting to support the people on the Peninsula in this important fight. The Labor senator was quoted in the Central Coast Express Advocate as saying the coalition had 'done nothing' on its 2013 election commitment, yet the fact of the matter is that the senator's office is based in Erina, one of the 26 suburbs added to the DWS maps that I alluded to earlier. In 2014 a group of doctors from Erina approached me asking for someone to do something about the doctor shortage in that area. They spoke, we listened and we acted. We had to, because Labor had failed. Senator O'Neill also claims that I have 'suddenly decided this issue is an emergency'. This, to be honest, is an insult to the hundreds of local residents who have written to me and an insult to the 100 people who turned up at Jasmine Greens Park Kiosk in the pouring rain last week.

Our public commitment to fight to address the GP shortage has come after months and months of sustained hard work in listening to the needs of the people Woy Woy, Ettalong, Umina and surrounding suburbs, and partnering with them to come up with real solutions. It comes after several meetings with ministers in Canberra. It comes after door-knocking and speaking with local doctors, local GPs and local residents across the region.

We still have a lot more to do to ensure that we address this issue. But I am pleased to be able to stand in this House today not just to commend this legislation but also to endorse the focus of this government in tackling important health issues in rural areas. The forum at Jasmine Greens Park Kiosk was an outstanding example of the steps that we are taking to demonstrate effective community action and we will not rest until more is done to help the people of the Peninsula to see a local GP when they need to. I commend the bill to the House.

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