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

The member for Hawke asked this chamber to recognise that the government continues to strengthen Medicare through delivering the planned 58 Medicare urgent care clinics. I would suggest to him that he's a little premature in seeking this recognition, since the government has only delivered 16 clinics. I would also suggest to this chamber that we return to this motion after the government has actually delivered the 58 clinics they've promised. Again I ask, as I so often do in this House: what about regional, rural and remote communities, where the need for health care is most acute? What is the Albanese Labor government doing for us?

Of the nine urgent care clinics opened in Victoria, six are within 25 kilometres of Melbourne's CBD—and 550 kilometres from where I live. The other three are in Shepparton, Geelong and Ballarat—all large regional towns that already have ample healthcare facilities. Mind you, I'm sure they would complain that they don't have enough. Why isn't the government prioritising Mildura, Horsham or Swan Hill in my electorate of Mallee? Does the government plan to provide those communities with urgent care clinics, where they are urgently needed? Some might accuse me of being cynical, but from where I'm sitting it looks like the Labor government are doing with this policy what the Labor government do with all their policies: ignoring regional communities, who desperately need help, in favour of metropolitan and large regional centres who vote for them. They know most rural and remote communities don't typically favour them at election time, so when they get into power Labor just cast off the lifeblood of these communities and leave us to die on the vine. It is disgraceful.

In the final analysis, however, this entire debate is practically moot from the perspective of people doing it tough in the rural and remote communities that I represent. The fact is, urgent care clinics might do more harm than good in country towns where there aren't enough GPs as it is. Who is going to work in the care clinics? I know of one GP who's been taken out of his practice to work in the clinic. Nurses who already have more patients than they can handle, and who are already close to burnout, will be diverted to staff these clinics. It's a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul, and it won't work where I come from. One thing the government could do to channel more doctors to where they are most needed in country Australia would be to reverse the perverse decision to expand the distribution priority areas to include suburban and outer metropolitan regions. They won't, of course, because they expanded them for political reasons: to win votes in those urban electorates. Let's face it: Labor is deaf to the needs of regional electorates. Fancy politicising health! Who would have thought.

The purpose of the DPA as implemented by the former coalition government was to address the maldistribution of doctors in rural areas. By extending it to the most suburban areas of Australia, the Labor government has completely undermined the purpose of the DPA. The number of international doctors moving away from rural areas as soon as Labor made the expansion public increased by 57 per cent in just six months to the end of 2022, according to Senate estimates. If the government wanted to do something about the provision of health care in rural towns, it would reverse the expansion of the DPA, urgently. But the truth is that the government doesn't want to do anything for remote towns and health policy, or any other policy in regional centres. We know why: because there are no votes in it for them. That's cynical, but it's self-evident.

Can the member for Hawke assure this chamber that the Labor government's urgent care clinics are intended for all Australians? Or are they only going to communities who vote Labor? If they do eventually get to remote communities, where they are needed most of all, can he assure this chamber that there will be a sufficient health workforce available to staff these clinics? Will the Labor government reverse their decision to expand the distribution priority areas, and what is the government planning to do to solve the chronic shortage of healthcare workers in regional and remote Australia?

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