Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Medical Journal of Australia, in August 2023, published an editorial that described the shortage of doctors in remote, rural and regional Australian communities as 'a longstanding health policy challenge' many decades in the making, and that is very true. To create a generalist rural GP requires at least four to eight years of postgraduate study. For a rural specialist or subspecialist, it's five to 10 years or longer. So the timeframes for increasing our medical workforce are very long.

We had coalition governments that, for 10 years, did nothing. In 2016, when I was first elected, I went to see Sussan Ley, the member for Farrer, now the deputy opposition leader, to express to her my concerns about the declining and ageing rural GP workforce. Nothing was done. When she was removed as health minister and replaced by Greg Hunt, I went to see Greg Hunt on several occasions to say that the rural GP workforce was worsening. I met with him, I think, on a second occasion about six months later with members of the Department of Health to say that the workforce modelling was very poor, that our rural GPs were declining in number and that this was becoming an increasing crisis—they were the words I used—for primary care in rural and regional places and also in outer metropolitan areas. Very little was done.

I would like to congratulate our health team, led by Mark Butler and also by the member for Dobell and the member for Cooper, for the incredible work they are doing to improve access to primary care through our rural workforce and for the things that they have done to increase the number of medical students wanting to go into general practice. I'm pleased to report that in 2022, the last year we have statistics for, there was actually an increase, although small, in the number of medical students wanting to go into general practice schemes. We know that medical students that are trained in rural areas are more likely than city medical students to stay in the bush. That's very important. It's the reason why the Albanese Labor government is doing all it can to improve access to rural GP training.

On top of increasing investments in bulk-billing, we're investing $1.5 billion in an indexation boost to every single Medicare rebate. That increases the amount that doctors are receiving for every single Medicare service and makes it more likely that people will work, and more viable for people to work, in rural general practices. As we've heard, there is statistical evidence that bulk-billing is increasing in rural and regional areas as well as in metropolitan areas.

Further to this, our government is investing a further $2.2 billion in reforms to help strengthen other Medicare item numbers, including prolonged consultations, now and in the future. This includes payments for GPs to improve and grow their teams and to have case conferencing rebate, and it includes easier access to telehealth for many patients. It's very important, with issues like distance and transport difficulties, that telehealth is providing healthcare access to people who find it difficult to get into GP practices in rural and regional areas. Importantly, the Albanese government is really expanding that. There are practice incentives of up to $21,000 a year, with workforce incentives, to improve workforce participation in health care.

We know that there are problems in the bush not just in our GP workforce but in our nursing workforce and with specialist nurses such as diabetes educators. We've seen huge shortages in rural and regional areas. We're doing what we can to improve access to general practices for these rural health workers as well. There's also $4,000 to $10,000 a year for doctors to provide skilled services and speciality training for eligible doctors to provide emergency care through our emergency care centres.

Our government is doing as much as it possibly can. After 10 years of coalition neglect, it's going to take a long time for us to turn the workforce issues around, but we are determined to do it, and we will do it. As a member for Clark has said, it can be done.

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