Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment Participation, Training and Sport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to speak about the shortage of doctors in the electorate of Boothby. First of all I would like to say that my wife and I were very happy to go to the Pink Ribbon Ball on Saturday, 11 October. This is a fundraiser that is held specifically to assist breast cancer research at Flinders Medical Centre, the major public hospital in my electorate. It started originally as the Lyn Wrigley Ball. Lyn sadly died too young when her life was taken by breast cancer. Her family continued with the Lyn Wrigley Foundation to raise money to support the cause of breast cancer research. The Pink Ribbon Ball raised over $200,000 and this will go towards building the Flinders Centre for Innovation in Cancer, which will be a very important facility at Flinders Medical Centre.

But the issue that I rise to speak on today is the shortage of general practitioners in particular in my electorate of Boothby. My electorate is classified as being between inner metropolitan and outer suburban—parts are inner metropolitan and parts are outer suburban. In my electorate, which has a very high proportion of elderly Australians—of seniors—we have a very high workload for our general practitioners. I am aware of several practices that are unable to find anyone to join their practices in the suburbs in the western part of my electorate, where they do have a very high caseload. One of the issues is that these suburbs are not classified by the department as areas of need. Where once the shortages were in regional Australia, now we are seeing shortages in outer suburban areas, something we have seen growing over the last 12 years.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! There being no quorum, I will resume the chair at 10 am.

(Quorum formed)

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—