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

Listening to the member for Bennelong's speech just then, I feel nothing but how fabulous it must be to be a constituent in the member for Bennelong's electorate with the amount of health care there, the dollars that are spent there and the expertise that is there. But I would point out that that is not the case in regional Australia, and the disparity between healthcare delivery in the regions and our urban centres is so vast, it is no wonder that our mortality and morbidity rates are as high as they are in comparison to an urban setting.

I notice my counterpart here today, the Assistant Minister for Rural and Regional Health. I'm really glad that she's here. She might even be able to answer some of my questions as we move along. In my relatively new role as the shadow assistant minister for regional health, I decided to hold summits and forums wherever I could. These have elicited a vast amount of knowledge from those who are grassroots—those who work, talk the talk and live the walk—healthcare providers in regional settings, and they acknowledge all the difficulties and challenges that are being faced there and the complexity of how difficult these issues are to resolve.

I've been to the north coast of New South Wales, Central Queensland, regional Victoria and also the south of South Australia, in the Riverland. Just recently, I took the deputy opposition leader, David Littleproud, down to the Clarendon Medical Centre in Maryborough, and we talked about how hard it is to get doctors and to bring them into Australia—the hurdles that they need to go through and the barriers that they face in coming to Australia. I think one of the most devastating things that I have heard since doing this role came in a comment from a South African doctor. She is a mother with kids. Her husband is also a doctor, and they were brought out to Australia. She has friends back home in South Africa who are interested in coming to Australia to offer their skills, and she told them: 'Don't do it. Just don't do it. It's too hard.' I think that's an indictment on our entire system and the fact that we need an serious overhaul of our Home Affairs process, the Ahpra process and the colleges processes. I would urge the government to look into that.

I think we will look at the numbers in the short time I have left with regard to some of the reviews that have occurred regarding regional health. We find that the Royal Flying Doctor Service's Best for the bushbaseline report shows that in very remote regions people are 2.7 times more likely to die from potentially avoidable causes. Australians living in the nation's most remote areas are likely to die on average 14.3 years earlier than someone in Sydney, Brisbane or Melbourne. Women, specifically, have a life expectancy gap of 16 years. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has found that those living outside major centres have higher reported rates of chronic diseases, diabetes, obesity and high blood pressure. They have a higher incidence of low-birth-weight babies and poorer antenatal and postnatal care. There's also a greater prevalence of mental health problems. Yet there are 2.7 doctors per 1,000 people in rural and remote compared to 4.3 in the cities. It is not quite twice, but it is a number that ought to shock us.

Labor's expansion of the distribution priority areas, as one of the health minister's decisions, took 56 per cent more doctors out of the regions and put them in outer suburbs. That has created even more of a headache for us out in the regions. In my electorate, 58 per cent of the GPs in my entire electorate, which is over a third of Victoria, are over the age of 55. That bodes really badly when we are not replacing those doctors. The fact is that we're not replacing like for like. My husband is 70 years old. Last week, the week before—a GP looking to retire very shortly. He's not the only one. But he works 70 hours a week, compared to a lot of the younger GPs who are coming through who want to work 30 hours a week and want to manage a work-life balance. I actually don't know what that is, but we need to address the real issues that face our regional communities. (Time expired)

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