Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this motion from the member for Mallee and acknowledge the importance of this issue in my electorate. The Albanese Labor government has put forward a range of measures to address health workforce shortages and improve health outcomes for people living in rural, remote and regional Australia, including my regional electorate of Blair, which takes in rural parts of Ipswich and the Somerset region. At the outset, the government funds more than $1.9 billion a year for programs to develop the workforce and support a more equitable distribution of health professionals to areas of need, especially regional and rural areas. Our first budget put in place a range of increased incentives for doctors to practice in rural and remote communities like that of the member who's bringing this motion. It is very significant and rewards doctors moving to regional Australia with the skills they need. We've already seen the benefits of this investment, with a significant increase in the number of junior doctors commencing as GP trainees in 2024. In fact the last two years have seen the biggest increase in doctor numbers in a decade. We've also seen extra training places from an oversubscribed rural generalist training scheme, building our rural workforce. That's not fixing every problem in every single community, but more doctors, bulk-billing, Medicare urgent care clinics and Medicare mental health centres, like in my community, are starting to turn around the challenges we inherited from the coalition, who saw bulk-billing go into freefall.

I know there are a range of levers we need to pull, and we're doing so. For example, in the education portfolio we put in place some very significant HECS or HELP debt relief for medical and nursing graduates who move to regional Australia. We put in place a number of single-employer model trials to try and deal with the industrialised disadvantage that GP registrars face in regional communities compared to their hospital based counterparts as well. The $3.5 billion investment put in place 12 months ago to triple the bulk-billing incentive is benefiting regional Australia more than our cities. We know about 40 per cent of more than five million additional free visits to a doctor that took place over the last 12 months happened in regional Australia. Australians living in regional, rural and remote areas will benefit from the $213.6 million package in the 2024-25 budget, delivering cheaper medicines, more access to scans and other tests and more free mental health services and investments in the health workforce.

But I acknowledge that this is an ongoing challenge in my community. In August last year, I held a roundtable on regional health, in Fernvale in the Somerset region in my electorate, with the Assistant Minister for Rural and Regional Health. It was attended by a number of participants from a range of professional bodies, service providers and local community groups, including Services for Australian Rural and Remote Allied Health, SARRAH, which the member referred to in her motion.

A key focus of the forum was allied health workforce shortages and service access issues, which have a real impact on people living in the Somerset region. One of the things we discussed was that the government had just announced a health workforce review to address these issues and to ensure we optimise our health professionals, including allied health professionals, in regional, rural and remote areas. That review recently concluded, and the government is now carefully considering its recommendations along with other primary health care and workforce reviews. We look forward to seeing the outcome of that.

Certainly, as a regional MP, I have been advocating for better healthcare services in my electorate. I am pleased to say that we delivered a Medicare urgent care clinic and a Head to Health, or Medicare mental health centre, in Ipswich. These proved to be very popular and made a real difference for patients in Blair, including people from rural areas who come in to Ipswich to access these services. Recently, the Minister for Health and Aged Care and I visited both facilities. We heard that the Ipswich urgent care clinic has had 11,000 presentations since it opened in August last year, while the Medicare mental health centre has had 1,660 appointments since it opened in May. I want to thank Dr Ajit Bhalla and the ForHealth team at the urgent care clinic and the Open Minds team at the mental health centre for their outstanding work in boosting bulk-billing health services in Ipswich.

The minister also met Dr Tony Bayliss and his partner and wife, Dr Cath Hester, of the Colleges Crossing Family Practice. Tony is the chair of the Darling Downs West Moreton PHN, and Cath is the Queensland chair of the RACGP Queensland. They talked about the issues in regional and rural areas. I'm pleased that we've got great practitioners across my electorate who contribute in this way.

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