Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One of the changes I have seen over the years as the member for Griffith, on Brisbane's Southside, has been the significant investments undertaken by the government in the delivery of local health services. The federal government has now invested $13 million into the Greenslopes Private Hospital to fund the University of Queensland's new clinical school, providing training infrastructure to support additional medical places, including a state-of-the-art lecture theatre, 14 tutorial rooms and a computer lab.

For those of you not familiar with Brisbane's Southside—and I hope the member for Bonner is familiar with Brisbane's Southside—Greenslopes Private Hospital has a proud history. As a military hospital set up in 1942, at the height of the Second World War, the hospital took wounded from battlefronts in the Pacific, Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. Of the three original bunkers built into the hospital, one of the bunkers still exists today, and it has been turned into a historical museum. My mother was a nurse at this hospital during the war, and part of her job was to nurse back to health wounded Australian diggers returned from Papua New Guinea and elsewhere in the South Pacific.

The government has also invested $7½ million in the recently opened Prostate Cancer Research Centre at Princess Alexandra Hospital, the first of its kind in Australia. Next year Queensland X-Ray Coorparoo will be able to offer a range of bowel, breast and cervical cancer screening through Medicare, providing greater access to MRI services for patients and allowing local residents to manage their health and keep more money in their back pockets. The government has also injected a $900,000 funding boost to support the expansion of local clinical training placements, with Mater Health Services and the PA Hospital set to benefit. The government is also delivering $176,000 to construct a new maternity and neonatal clinical simulation centre on the site at Mater Health Services and has provided funding for 32 new specialist doctors on the Brisbane Southside as part of an overall investment of $356 million across the country. This builds on the government's recent investments in health services on the Southside. One of the most significant we have seen is the Annerley GP superclinic. I recently went to visit the GP superclinic with the member for Moreton. UQ Healthcare run the clinic and the rooms are filling up quickly with nurses, doctors, physios and others keen to improve access to the local community for the range of health services on offer. The government is building 64 GP superclinics around Australia along with an increased investment in GP services to improve access to integrated GP and primary health care.

One of the government's other key commitments is to close the life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians and we are working hard on that. Under the New Directions mothers and babies services initiative, we have provided grants to expand Indigenous child and maternal health services in 32 locations around Australia, including in my own electorate. We are working hard to deliver better health services on Brisbane's Southside. (Time expired)