Andrew Gee (Calare, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Education) Share this | Hansard source

In many ways there is still a great divide between city and country. There is a divide and an inequality in income. If you live in a country area, your income will not be as high as it would be if you lived in a city area. There is still a great divide in education, educational opportunities and educational outcomes. And there is definitely still a great divide in health outcomes. The cold, hard truth is that the further you live away from the city the younger you will die. The average life expectancy in the country is significantly less than it is in the city. That divide worsens as you move away from the city and go further out into the regions.

One way that we can deal with this great divide and this huge inequality is by getting more GPs to the bush so that they can practice in the bush and bolster health services in country areas. This is really important because, as the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has noted, potentially avoidable hospitalisations can be 2½ times higher in remote areas than in cities. We have to bridge that great divide in health, so the distribution priority area system identifies areas in regional, rural and remote Australia with unmet need or lacking access to GP services. What it does is basically brings in overseas trained doctors and participants in the Bonded Medical Program. They have to set up in those distribution priority areas. It's all designed to bridge that great divide.

But what the new government has done is basically expanded distribution priority areas to include everything up to the outskirts of the major cities. It's no longer a program designed to get more GPs into country areas; it's expanding it to more metropolitan areas—

Periurban areas, as the member for Barker says. Here are some of the new distribution priority areas around Australia. In Sydney, if you live in Hornsby—that's right—you're now a GP distribution priority area. Hornsby is not Struggle Street. Warringah, Fairfield, Penrith, Rouse Hill, Richmond and Windsor are now distribution priority areas. It's absurd! In Canberra, Belconnen, Gungahlin and Fyshwick are now distribution priority areas for GPs. If you live in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, like in Frankston—yep, that's right—you're now a distribution priority area. In Adelaide, suburbs like Mitcham; and, in Perth, suburbs like Kalamunda are now distribution priority areas.

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