Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the spirit in which the mover has brought forward this MPI, because I know that, since he got to this place, this has been an issue he has been passionate about. I know that, because in my own electorate of Bendigo, where we have the La Trobe Rural Health School, our university worked with his university to really champion the need for more medical places in our regional areas. That's because, as previous speakers have mentioned, when we train regional students in regional universities they stay and work in the regions. It's a fundamental fact and what all the data now shows.

However, it's not as simple as creating more medical places. We need to do more. We need to interrogate the data and look at who is applying for medical places and their pathways to those medical places. One of our greatest challenges when it comes to recruiting people to medicine is the very high ATAR that's required. Our ATAR system is skewed towards elite inner-city schools. They do the best when it comes to ATARS. They're the schools whose students go into medicine—and not just medicine but other health professions. We need to have a broader conversation about who we are recruiting into our medical schools and where they're doing their medical placements.

La Trobe's Bendigo campus, in fact, has the largest rural health school in Australia. That may surprise people, because we don't actually have a medical school. What we do have is midwifery, nursing, dentistry, pharmacy and physio. We have all the allied services that go with it, and we continue to grow. When we are looking at solving the crisis in rural health care we need to look at the teams of medical professionals who work in GP practices. The changes this government has put forward in terms of nurse practitioners, allowing and encouraging nurses to work to their full scope, are a measure that will help us solve some of the challenges we have in rural health care. The tripling of the bulk-billing incentive is critical to attracting and encouraging doctors to practise as GPs and remain GPs. In my own electorate we've seen bulk-billing rates increase by 8.6 per cent. Through that one government measure alone we are seeing more GPs bulk-billing.

When it comes to our GPs, we need to have greater interrogation of the barriers to people going into general practice. A generation ago, about 50 per cent of medical graduates were going into general practice; today it's about 20 per cent and dropping. We need to interrogate that. When you ask these students why, they say: 'Well, I'm looking at the experience. I'm looking at how I can have that salary, how I can work in a team environment, when I have a university debt.' We need to look at better models of employment. Graduating as a doctor and then becoming a small-business owner running your own practice isn't attractive for every young person who goes into the medical profession. That is one area where we need to encourage and incentivise.

In my own part of the world, what was known as a GP superclinic is today Bendigo Primary Care Centre. They are at a scale whereby they can start to employ young doctors and bring them in on a salary package. This is becoming very popular where we've got these bigger clinics in regional cities. They are currently running a priority care clinic, funded by the state government, which is taking pressure off the hospital system. Those GPs are able to practise a broader scope of medicine, something like what they might experience in a hospital setting.

This is where our hospitals are critical. I also say the states need to be part of this conversation. It is great that our state governments are building hospitals, but they are also sucking up a lot of our medical graduates. We need to get the states more involved in this conversation if we're to meet the demand not just for GPs but for doctors in our hospitals.

This is a complex issue, and I welcome the bipartisan way in which the discussion is happening—at least between the Independents, the crossbench and the government.

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