Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

Indeed, the difference could not be more stark. Under the previous government, more than 94 million telehealth consultations through Medicare to 16 million patients was the number we achieved. There have been 857 new medicines listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme since 2019 alone. More than 128,000 Australians were supported by headspace each year and there were 1,400 additional nurse placements for the regions. The regions is where I want to very much concentrate on with my contribution because it's the regions which have been left behind by this Albanese Labor government when it comes to health care.

Bulk-billing has collapsed since Labor came into government. The government is overseeing the worst bulk-billing rate in a decade after it was an all-time high of 88.8 per cent under the Liberals and Nationals. The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners health of the nation report showed that the number of GPs who bulk-billed all their patients halved in just 12 months, while the cost of seeing a GP increased by $11 on average. We have a city-centric health minister who, when questioned about bulk-billing, said, 'Well, if you don't get a doctor who wants to bulk bill, put the phone down and ring another doctor.' Well that might all be well and good in the leafy suburbs of Adelaide where the health minister comes from, but when you're in Parkes or Forbes or Junee or Cowra or Gundagai or many of those other vibrant regional towns, it is difficult to find a doctor let alone another doctor who might bulk bill.

Indeed, I am very disappointed that the federal Labor government changed the distribution priority areas for GPs to include some of the outer suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne, as well as Newcastle, Wollongong, the Gold Coast and other major centres. What that did is that it told a budding new GP or somebody who had already been operating in a regional centre that they could go and hang their shingle in one of those, some might say, more desirable areas, and that left and is leaving country centres high and dry. Indeed, many of them are overworked because of the work that they have to do, which they do lovingly.

That is why I was so pleased, when I was the Deputy Prime Minister, that I was able to get the Murray-Darling Medical Schools Network up and running and funded. Its footprint extends into Wagga Wagga, Dubbo, Orange—I see the member for Calare sitting behind me; they've certainly benefited in his electorate—Bendigo, Mildura and Albury-Wodonga. All of those centres are now training young doctors from start to finish. They're doing their entire medical degree in a regional centre. The Orange medical school was opened on 4 March 2022. What it means for that one and the one at Wagga Wagga is that hopefully the young budding doctors will not only fall in love with the region but might even fall in love with somebody in the region and stay in the region. It's proof positive that, if you do a regional course and get a diploma from a regional university, generally speaking, three-quarters of those people stay in the regions, live in the regions, operate in the regions and make the regions their home.

When you've got a health minister who then says, 'If you don't get what you like when you pick the phone up, hang it up and ring the next doctor,' it goes to show how out of touch he is with the dilemma that is in regional Australia at the moment. The Mayor of Parkes, Neil Westcott, told me recently there hasn't been a baby born at Parkes hospital for five years. The health minister, if you asked him, would say, 'They can go down the road 40 kilometres to Forbes and have their baby there,' but it's not the same thing. Why shouldn't a community of 12,000 people have its own obstetrics services—its own maternity services—at its own hospital?

It's just not right, and it's not right because we've got this distribution priority areas change. It's not right because we've got a city-centric health minister and a city-centric government not looking after the health needs, the Medicare needs and the bulk-billing needs of people who choose to live in the regions. The regions are the best place in the world in which to live, but this government has to do a lot more to improve the health services therein.

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