Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for Health and Ageing. Would the minister inform the House how the government has expanded medical training since 1996? Minister, are there any alternative views and what is the government’s response?

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bowman for his question. I acknowledge his work over many years as a clinician and also his current contributions to public policy in this House. I can inform him and other members that, ever since the government received official advice about the general medical workforce shortage in this country, we have been substantially increasing the number of medical training places. Since 2000 there has been a 30 per cent increase in the number of first-year places in Australia’s medical schools. Last year there were some 1,300 medical graduates around Australia, and it is anticipated that, on current policies, there will be 2,100 medical graduates by the year 2011. That is a 60 per cent increase, thanks to the policies of the Howard government.

Yesterday the Queensland Premier spent $150,000 on ads claiming that the federal government had somehow short-changed the people of Queensland. Even on Premier Beattie’s own figures, the number of Queensland medical graduates has increased by some 25 per cent since 1996. But what Premier Beattie did not say was that between 1983 and 1995, when the population of Queensland increased by 30 per cent, the number of Queensland medical graduates actually decreased by six per cent under the policies of the Hawke-Keating government. What Premier Beattie also did not say was that there were just over 200 first-year medical students a year in Queensland under the former Labor government; this year, under this government, 404 students will commence publicly funded medical training in Queensland. I have a very simple piece of advice for the Queensland Premier: he should spend his taxpayers’ money fixing the Queensland public hospital system and not telling fibs about the federal government.