Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

When you're sick and you need a doctor, it should not be a herculean task to get an appointment. However, doctor shortages exacerbate poorer health outcomes for everyone, in particular those in regional and rural towns. I can speak for my experience in Mallee.

In the 46th Parliament I worked hard with the then Minister for Health, Greg Hunt, to work on solutions for this problem. These measures included making telehealth permanent, thanks to COVID. We funded 80 Commonwealth supported places for rural medical programs so students could study in the regions. We know that 60 per cent of those who study in the regions will stay there. We provided HECS-HELP for doctors and nurse practitioners to have their HECS-HELP reimbursed at the completion of time in the bush. We also incentivised the rural bulk-billing incentive and increased it. We permanently retained telehealth. In the last two years, there have been over 100 million telehealth services delivered to more than 17 million people with a cost of $5.1 billion. Telehealth increased access, reduced travel time, reduced the risks of sitting in waiting rooms, where others might have COVID, and reduced waiting times for patients in regional and rural areas to see a doctor.

The previous coalition government also funded $114.2 million which includes further Commonwealth supported places, so students could study medicine regionally. I recently had the pleasure of attending Charles Sturt University's new Mallee Clinical School in Swan Hill, which will benefit under this initiative. I also advocated for this program in Mildura and worked and will continue to work with La Trobe and Monash universities to see that rural secondary school students can have a closed pipeline from year 12 all the way through their postgraduate course. I have already raised this with the new Minister for Education, Jason Clare, and will be raising this with the new Minister for Health and Aged Care, Mark Butler, when I meet with him.

I have two concerns about the recent changes to health policy under the new government. The first is the expansion of the distribution priority areas classification system, as recently announced by the Minister for Health and Aged Care, which outlined the expansion of the DPA to modified Monash 2 areas. As we heard from the member for Dunkley, international and bonded medical students can now go to Frankston instead of to Mildura or Ouyen or Swan Hill or Horsham—regional areas that are desperate for doctors. It doesn't take two guesses to work out where those doctors would prefer to be; it would be somewhere there are lots and lots of patients, lots of other doctors and lots of hospitals who can support them. More needs to be done. This solution by the minister for health is not a solution at all, and it will detract from health care in our regional and rural areas.

The member for Dunkley spoke about a patient who has to wait for five days for an appointment. I can tell her and I'll tell this chamber that in my communities people are waiting four weeks to see a GP. We have older doctors who are retiring, and they need to retire. One of them is my husband. We have very few new doctors coming to our regional areas. This is a huge concern, and this government will now be held to account for the policies it is putting in place.

I have a question about the 50 urgent care clinics that this government is putting in place—one in Dunkley. That's excellent. Mallee is 83½ thousand square kilometres. Will there be one in Mallee at all? That is my question to the minister for health. It is a reasonable question. A lot of patients prefer to be bulk-billed, especially if there are plenty of doctors who are bulk-billing. The bulk-billing fees need to increase. Urgent care clinics—they are a great idea—need to be more than a platitude. They need to help us in regional settings. I'm concerned that, despite the health inequity in my electorate, the dire need for more government funding and the fact that Mildura is in the top 50 cities in Australia by population, my electorate will not see one of these urgent care clinics.

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