Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to talk today about the vital role Medicare Locals play in keeping Australians well and out of hospital. There are 61 Medicare Locals across the country. They are designed to put some decisions about health services in the hands of people who know their needs the best—well-informed local communities. In my own electorate the Perth South Coastal Medicare Local delivers after-hours GP services in Rockingham and Mandurah, dial-a-doctor services and suicide prevention and it will also operate the headspace Youth Mental Health Centre and in the Rockingham GP superclinic when it opens next year.

Medicare Locals were established because patients and doctors benefit from local solutions to local challenges. To many communities health services are disconnected, the health professionals and doctors commute to communities and therefore do not share information. Medicare Locals fills the gap. Any reduction in funding or scaling back of the Medicare Locals program will have a severe impact on my community. Rockingham, Kwinana and Mandurah have long been identified as areas of concern for age-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes. The Perth South Coastal Medicare Local provides services to meet these local challenges. It employs around 90 frontline health workers who work across a range of areas to support the needs of my community.

In 2012-13 the Labor government provided half a million dollars for the Perth South Coastal Medicare Local to address priority gaps in after-hours GP services in the Rockingham and Mandurah areas. As part of this funding a new GP after-hours clinic opened in Mandurah in November 2012. When the state Liberal government cut funding for the Rockingham after-hours clinic, Perth South Coastal Medicare Local stepped in to keep clinic hours in operation—a clinic that provides about 900 hours of after-hours services per month.

Without the Medicare Locals program many families in the community would miss out. Young people with mental illnesses in the community would miss out. We know that one in four young people in our community with experience a mental health issue this year. The Perth South Coastal Medicare Local is taking the lead in establishing a headspace youth mental health service in Rockingham. It will support young people dealing with depression. It will support substance abuse and other mental health issues and provide early interventions and help them to fully participate in the social and economic life of their communities. So far 92 per cent of the young people using headspace centres in other parts of the country have reported improvement in their mental health after using headspace, and I expect to see the same result in Rockingham. Reducing the capacity of Medicare Locals will mean neither the headspace service nor the Rockingham after-hours clinic would be able to operate.

Right across the country Medicare Locals are assessing current and future health needs of communities and consulting with stakeholders about what matters in health at the front line. This is important in Rockingham, Kwinana and Mandurah, where the communities have long needed health care services that suit their needs and suit the model of the communities of Rockingham, Kwinana and Mandurah in the best way possible. That is why the Medicare local is so important to the communities of the south coastal areas of Perth, Western Australia.