Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Mallee for bringing on this motion about the crisis in rural, remote and regional health. My father was a GP in Kempsey for 30-odd years, and one of the biggest kicks I get out of this job is when people, for example, at the markets on Saturday at Port Macquarie, come up and say to me, 'Your dad delivered my three kids' or—this actually happened last weekend—'I had a motorbike accident when I was 19, and I was in a coma for six weeks. Your dad saved my life, and he looked after me for many months after that.' I'm very proud of that fact. But it really is reflective of the fact that, long ago, doctors went to the regions and they stayed in the regions. Right now there are fewer doctors than there were in the seventies and eighties in my home town of Kempsey. That's the problem we face not just with specialist generalist GPs but with health care across the board—occupational therapy, speech therapy.

You can't make a GP go to the country. You can't push them out there; you can't force them and say, 'If you're going to be a GP and graduate from university after six, eight, 10 years, you've got to go to the country.' That's not fair on them. People need to make that decision as to what their future looks like. But we can certainly put things in place to incentivise our young people who are basically putting their life on hold to get through their medical degree. My nephew is doing one at Wagga Wagga right now. We know if people study in the regions, they settle in the regions. Generally they might meet a boyfriend or girlfriend, spend time there and decide to settle. We need to build up that relationship with our universities to get our young people into regional and rural programs or degrees so they go to the country, go to regional and rural areas, study and stay. The other thing we can do is incentivise to get those people out into the country, whether that's through tax concessions or helping them with housing, which is a huge problem at the moment. It's all well and good to have somebody come to the region—

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 13:15 to 13:24

I was in the throes of talking about incentivising general specialists as well as allied health professionals into the region. I note the coalition's work with the National Rural Generalist Pathway back in 2017. The coalition have committed to $400 million to incentivise rural and regional practitioners. We also need to restore telehealth. In the absence of those practitioners, the second-best practice is telehealth, and to see cuts in this area is disappointing. But we do need that backup system in the absence of having people on the ground.

In finishing up, I want to highlight two of the government's policies that have seriously affected regional Australia. The first one was the change to the distribution priority area. For those of you who don't know, this allowed overseas doctors to practise in the regions to ensure that we filled that void where it was needed. Unfortunately, Labor changed that to include peri-urban areas. In my electorate alone, I've heard that we've lost four doctors. The member for Parkes said he'd lost six doctors. That is across Australia. Those doctors moved from regional and remote areas because they could, because of the changes that Labor made. It made it more difficult to access services in the regions. The second one was reducing visits covered by Medicare for mental health issues from 20 to 10. We have committed that we will restore those visits back to 20 when we get back into government next term.

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