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

I thank the member for Calare for putting forward this motion. Politicians like a quick fix. There is no quick fix to this problem, which has evolved over the last 40 or 50 years. And there are many causes. I approached the Minister for Health and Aged Care when I was first elected in 2016 to describe to him the difficulty that disadvantaged areas, outer metropolitan areas and rural and regional areas were having in attracting general practitioners. The member for Calare was a member of the government at that stage. That government did nothing.

We have watched the situation get much, much worse since then. Unfortunately, rural GP training positions were not being filled. More and more GPs were leaving the bush and rural areas. They were also leaving outer metropolitan areas, for a whole a variety of reasons. Health care has become very complex. You need to be highly trained over a whole range of disciplines to become a general practitioner these days. The member for Mackellar here well knows that. People need to train for long periods of time. They need a lot of supports in place to practise 21st-century medicine. In rural areas, that's often very difficult to find. Skilled nurses, skilled allied health professionals, IT specialists, communication specialists and pharmacists are very difficult to obtain in rural and regional areas, but also in outer metropolitan areas. I approached the Minister for Health and Aged Care in the Liberal-National government multiple times about this. Members of the department of health were often present in our discussions. Very little has changed. The Labor government has put in place a significant number of changes. It has increased the number of rural clinical schools. I paid my respects to the member for Parkes, Mark Coulton, who did his very best when he was the Minister for Regional Health in the previous government to try and improve that.

More recently, in northern Australia, we added more medical schools to try and encourage more local training of medical practitioners. In 2024, for the first time, the number of rural training positions for GPs were fully filled. That's after almost a decade of those training positions not being filled. So there's a combination of problems, including complex medicine and the importance of having supports for medical practitioners in rural and regional areas and outer metropolitan areas. There may be difficulties in moving a family to a rural or remote area, such as the lack of supports available through the health system, which has led to difficulty in attracting people to these areas. Unfortunately, as I've said, the difficulties continue. It is important that every level of politics—from local government to state government to federal government—is involved in improving access to health care in the bush. It's going to involve novel, innovative solutions as we move forward.

Twenty-first-century medicine is very complex. For a general practitioner in a rural area, it includes training in emergency medicine, child health, geriatrics, cardiology, and expertise in genomics and genetics, and access to more complex pharmaceuticals. These are highly complex positions, and we need innovative solutions. It's not just about training more GPs and getting more GPs to move to the bush; it's about improving social conditions and giving general practitioners access to sabbaticals. It's about retraining GPs in teaching hospitals on a temporary basis. It involves getting them access to schooling for their children and work for their spouse. It involves a whole lot of modalities, and there is no quick fix. No matter what anyone wants, there is no quick fix. General practice is a highly complex field these days, and people require a lot of training and a lot of support, more so in rural areas where there may not be other general practitioners to help them. We need to encourage more people to move to areas of disadvantage, and this may involve significant expenditure.

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