Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to rise to offer a belated happy birthday to Medicare. It's worth celebrating the establishment of a scheme for basic health care for all Australians. It's also worth noting that while the Whitlam government introduced what was then known as Medibank, it was the Fraser coalition government that established the levy of 2.5 per cent on income to fund it. Medibank closed in 1981 but was revived and rebadged as a Medicare in 1984.

No system is perfect. Medicare has had to adapt and change to meet advances in diagnostic medicine and treatments, and while the member for Werriwa is happy to boast in her motion that 'as of 1 January 2023, the government will have reduced the cost of Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme co-payments', there is no mention that, also as of 1 January 2023, the government has also slashed by half the number of Medicare subsidised psychology sessions. These are really important, and I urge the government to reconsider this cut.

A concerned psychologist in my electorate took the time to interrogate the clinic's patient records from 2016. The research showed that the percentage of clients discharged, once their mental health disorder had been appropriately treated, rose from 52 per cent in 2016 to 100 per cent in 2020 when the coalition increased the number of Medicare funded sessions to 20. In this clinic, it remained at 100 per cent through 2021 and 2022. So everyone with those 20 sessions was getting the care they needed. In 2016, 48 per cent of clients were discharged with only a partial improvement in their mental health, because they ran out of sessions. That dropped to zero when the coalition doubled the sessions.

The Labor government has voted to enshrine cuts to Medicare subsidised mental health for all Australians. These cuts have come at a time when Australians in my electorate and others are facing natural disasters and cost-of-living pressures and when household energy bills are skyrocketing.

An important thing to focus on is the workforce shortages that affect our health system. Medicare is a great system, but it needs the professional staff to operate properly. The shortages in our health system disproportionately impact our regional and rural areas. The coalition had, and has, a solution for Nicholls. We committed $19.5 million to fund a collaborative effort by La Trobe University and Goulburn Valley Health to establish a dedicated rural clinical health school in Shepparton. This would train nurses, midwives and allied health professionals of the future. They would train in a regional setting and more often than not, based on the outcomes from the rural doctor training —which the coalition improved in my region—would choose to continue to work in regional areas. Labor came to government and chose to scrap the funding stream that supported that clinical health school. New governments have that choice but I don't agree with it, and I urge the government to reconsider. I think the government has got to address the current skills gaps and help train the healthcare workforce of the future, particularly in regional and rural areas.

The rural clinical health school proposed for Shepparton, to service northern Victoria, is worth another look. It's a strong collaboration between La Trobe University and Goulburn Valley Health. It'll provide increased opportunities for young people across the area to pursue a career in health and undertake study locally. We need that in our hospitals and our aged-care facilities. The Nationals were very keen to fund this not because it was our idea or our policy but because it was the best fit to tackle critical work shortages in the region.

Medicare is a great institution, but it only works if you have access to health care. You need doctors, nurses, midwives and allied health professionals to deliver that care. There is a long-term and critical shortage of health, aged-care and community-care workforce at Goulburn Valley Health, with double the critical numbers required for the future. The proposed Goulburn Valley clinical health school would complement existing campuses of La Trobe University and GOTAFE in central Shepparton, including current and future planned extensions to expand educational opportunities in the region. I'm sure there are other regions with the right combination of hospital and university that could come together. They just need some government support to make this a reality.

So I urge the government; I want to work constructively and collaboratively with those opposite—the Minister for Health and Aged Care, the Minister for Education and Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government—to look at this clinical health school. It's a no-brainer. It'll be a great thing for our young people. It'll be a great thing for moving young people through training and into looking after our most vulnerable people: those in aged care and those who need acute health care.

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