Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes the importance of having a well-trained medical workforce including doctors, nurses and allied health professionals for the sustainability of our health system;

(2) acknowledges the work of Health Workforce Australia in increasing the percentage of clinical training days for students, with the most recently released figures demonstrating a 50 per cent increase in 2012 compared to 2010;

(3) recognises that this increase in clinical training has been in part the result of the support provided to universities and health clinics through the Clinical Training Funding program;

(4) notes with concern the evidence provided in Senate Estimates on the 20 November 2013 by the Assistant Minister for Health that unallocated funds to support clinical training are currently frozen; and

(5) calls on the Government to immediately make available the money within Health Workforce Australia that assists universities and health services to make clinical placements available so that students can have improved access to placements in the upcoming academic year.

There are significant challenges facing Australia's health workforce for the future. The demand being driven by growth in chronic disease, increased expectations from the community and an ageing population means that, now more than ever, it is important that governments plan to have a well trained medical workforce for the sustainability of our healthcare system.

I am moving this motion because I believe it is irresponsible of this government to freeze funding which is so vital in ensuring these objectives are met and to threaten organisations which play such a vital role in health workforce planning for the future. Thousands of student doctors, nurses and allied health workers currently face an uncertain future thanks to the Abbott government. Funding to support clinical placements—essential for these students to finish their training or expand their scope of practice—has been frozen thanks to the Abbott government's commission of cuts. Students cannot finish their training and start work as much needed health professionals without access to clinical placements in universities and healthcare facilities.

When questioned in Senate estimates, the Assistant Minister for Health, Fiona Nash, admitted that the Abbott government had frozen the funding of Health Workforce Australia, which helps support universities and health providers to make clinical placements available. Shame on this government for locking up funding for such a vital program to support universities and healthcare operators provide clinical placements. Unfortunately, the coalition has a history of ignoring the future needs of the health workforce. When the now Prime Minister was health minister in the Howard government, he had an atrocious record on health workforce planning. He put a cap on GP training places which caused shortages of GPs right across the country. The Howard government's legacy on the health workforce was not one to be proud of, and the issues went much wider than GP training places. Indeed, 74 per cent of Australia faced a medical workforce shortage when Labor took office in 2007. This affected 60 per cent of the population, including many constituents in my electorate of Kingston who struggled to find a local GP. Of course, it was not just limited to my local electorate; it was right across the country. There was no vision and no policy during the Howard era in which the now Prime Minister was the health minister. It seems that this is a pattern that will continue now that he is Prime Minister. What we will see as a result is that Australia will head backwards in workforce planning and we will not have enough medical, nursing and allied health graduates to ensure that our needs are met. Indeed, when Labor came to office we had to start fixing up the mess that the previous health minister, the now Prime Minister, left.

Labor understood that there needed to be proper workplace planning when we came to government in 2007. We understood that there were wide-reaching problems going forward about supply of a well trained and well distributed health workforce. The member for Grey is here. I am sure he would understand the importance of a well distributed workforce to ensure that regional and remote areas are properly serviced.

Labor funded a $1.1 billion National Partnership Agreement on Hospital and Health Workforce Reform which included: more funding for undergraduate clinical training; an increase of postgraduate training places; and a huge capital investment into teaching and training infrastructure to expand teaching and training, especially at major regional hospitals to improve clinical training in rural Australia. We established a national health workforce agency, Health Workforce Australia, to drive a long-term vision and plan for our health workforce.

Health Workforce Australia is an important organisation. It was established through COAG to ensure the government had an agency that was committed to building capacity, boosting productivity and improving the distribution of our health workforce. The agency works in collaboration with a number of key stakeholders and has direct links with states and territories, which are the biggest employers in our health system. Importantly, it has links on the boards of universities that train our medical workforce which focus on providing leadership, advice, research and funding to address the challenges of building a sustainable health workforce for our future.

Australia needs Health Workforce Australia. It has proven that it can respond and plan for our future health workforce needs. For example, when the former Labor government increased bowel screening, many Australians required an endoscopy; however, the capacity in the workforce for endoscopy nursing was not there. Health Workforce Australia responded through the Expanded Scopes of Practice program and made funding available to support nurses to extend their skills as well as respond to the growing demand for these services. This is an example of Health Workforce Australia responding flexibly and quickly to the needs of the community to ensure that important preventative measures occur.

Programs such as the Clinical Training Funding program delivered by Health Workforce Australia have had a significant impact. Indeed, the number of clinical placement days in 2012 increased by 50 per cent, compared to 2010. The funding contributed to a huge increase in placement days in rural and remote Australia, an area which so desperately needs more health professionals.

The Clinical Training Funding program was expanding the clinical training capacity of the health workforce in Australia and promoting the growth in clinical training placement days in 25 different health professions to address workforce shortages—a great example of how essential this funding was to supporting growth in training and addressing health workforce issues. But this funding to support clinical placements is now frozen thanks to this government's commission of cuts. If this is not unfrozen, it will lead to students not being able to access the clinical placements they need and to existing health professionals not having the facilities to expand their clinical skills. This threatens all the great work that has been done by Health Workforce Australia over the last few years to help build capacity in our training places and to improve productivity in our health workforce.

Students will now be facing uncertainty over whether or not there will be facilities and training services available so they can pursue a healthcare career of their choice. The money which this government is holding up through its commission of cuts is hurting the ability of government agencies to provide essential programs to support clinical placements to get the health workforce we need.

I have grave concerns that the government may even cut this money altogether and abolish Health Workforce Australia. We know it has already axed the Alcohol and Other Drugs Council and flagged abolishing the National Preventative Health Agency. Axing Health Workforce Australia will send us backwards to a time when the now Prime Minister was health minister and when there was no coordination, no planning and no vision for our health workforce needs into the future. I call on the minister and the Prime Minister to release these funds. The new academic year is fast approaching. Students will want to know whether or not they can get a clinical place. They will want to know if they can pursue the career of their dreams. Freezing this funding really is quite irresponsible, quite retrograde and will really have, I believe, an incredibly detrimental effect.

As our population ages we will need more, not fewer, doctors, nurses and allied health workers—and we will need to ensure that they are distributed around the country. If Health Workforce Australia is abolished, as we know the minister has mooted for some time, these funds will be lost. These important funds have had a demonstrable impact on our clinical training places. As I said, we had a 50 per cent increase in two years. This is critically important. If these funds are not released, it will prevent students from finishing their training. The Abbott government will be leaving these students and those health professionals who want to extend their experience in limbo and denying Australians much-needed, home-grown health workers. We know that often the government's answer is to use 457 visas to grow workforces, but people want to train home-grown people here who want to have a career in the medical workforce. I call on the government to immediately reinstate this funding so our students can finish their training and become the doctors, nurses and allied health workers we need for the future.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Kingston. Is the motion seconded?

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Lalor. The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Kingston for her motion for, while it is certainly making some partisan political points, it does express at its heart a desire to address some of the critical medical staff shortages around the nation. It is very timely for me because it was only last week in this place that I raised the shortage of general practitioners in rural and regional areas. In fact, in my own town of Kimba and in the Elliston community on the state's far west coast, GP services are to be cut from full time to three days a week, and I will have a little more to say about this in a few moments.

Turning to the motion I can only concur with the member's concerns when she points out that we need to support a modern, proactive medical system with a sufficient and well-trained workforce. That is why, over the last 10 years, there has been such an increase in the number of medical undergraduate places.

It was said that, in the term of the previous government—and the member for Kingston once again gave this impression—the moves to address the doctor shortage, for instance, only came from her side of the parliament when in fact the figures I have here refute that. In fact, in 2003, there were 1,511 medical undergraduates in Australia; by 2006, there had been a 30 per cent increase to 2,071; and by the time of the change of government there were over 2½ thousand—a ramp-up of 1,000 or around 40 per cent. So the problem was well-recognised within the Howard government and addressed. In fact, since that time that number has grown by another 700: not as much as the initial increase; only about another 25 per cent. So both sides of politics have recognised the issue and done something about it. But it is like an oil tanker on the ocean: it takes some time to turn around.

I think it is something of an embarrassment to Australia that we have been reduced to poaching doctors and other medical professionals from all around the world to fill our shortfall. We should be very proud of our ability to train overseas students and, whether they then return to their country of origin or stay here, this world and Australia is a better place for it. But we should not have to actively entice fully trained doctors to come to fill a shortfall in Australia.

During the eighties and nineties I was a chairman of a local hospital board that has since been abolished by our state government in South Australia, a Labor administration, and we are far poorer for the event because it was part of the local board's job—their remit, if you like—to attract doctors into our communities. That chore has now become the responsibility of Country Health SA, and it is debatable how effective they are. After all, this government body is trying to attract people to live in communities that they do not live in themselves. It is far easier to be a champion of your local community than to try to tell somebody else how great it is when you do not live there yourself. However, in the eighties and nineties, there were plenty of doctors in Australia, and we had just a distribution problem—that is, there were too many in the city and not enough in the country. This in turn led to over-servicing and was at least part of the reason that the undergraduate intake numbers were cut.

Like an oil tanker, as I said, it takes time to turn around, and the tendency to overreach is not limited to the training of medical professionals. So by the time it became obvious we were going to run short of doctors, it took almost 10 years to fix the problem. But we will approach that point in the next few years.

The member's motion expresses concerns that funds to support clinical training are frozen. She should fear not, because the coalition is acutely aware of the need for training and placement. The reason we are so aware is that, collectively, we represent regional Australia, and it is regional Australia that is the canary in the coalmine when it comes to medical workforce shortages. It is our communities that suffer first, and so we have a great commitment to addressing the shortages. I assure the member that the funds have not been cut despite her party leaving the Australian people the worst set of government debt figures ever and leaving Australian industry on its knees and unable to compete internationally, suffering the burden of new taxes and market regulation that they on her side have personally been responsible for. She should have no fear because the coalition is committed to delivering the same funding deal for training as was the case under her government, and that is the deal that continues through to 31 December 2014.

All government expenditure is under review to identify waste and inefficiency. In fact, the government has established an audit commission to do exactly that across all arms of government. Considering the long list of underachievements and policy and delivery failures under the previous regime, we would be failing the Australian people if we did any less. However, the funding is earmarked and it will flow, and those questions are answered. Beyond that point—that is, December 2014—I point out to the member for Kingston that that is why we have a budget, and it will come soon enough.

I was speaking earlier about the rural doctor shortage and, as I said, we are once again heading for a time when we have sufficient numbers and, quite probably, a surplus in Australia, but we should be considering measures that will curtail this and—even more importantly—address the acute shortages around rural and regional Australia.

We all know the difficulties in finding GPs for country practice, and the problems and obstacles seem to be growing by the day. Backup, on-call, partner's opportunities, feminisation of the workforce, children's education, and training opportunities are just some of them. Perhaps a straight desire to live in the city close to elite sport, the arts and more dining options is another. I understand all that, and there is nothing wrong with people—doctors or anyone else—making those decisions about their lives.

However, there is much that is good about country practice, and many of my friends who are GPs and live and work in the country tell me they relish the hands-on responsibility for people's lives and the opportunity to practice their full range of skills and not take the accepted and peer-induced pressure to refer many of their clients to specialist services simply because they can.

The financial rewards for country service are well in front of city practice. Recently a rural based doctor in solo practice told me that he did not know why doctors were so reluctant to tell others what they earn in single-doctor practice. But in any case he was happy to share that he earned $300,000 to $320,000 a year after expenses but before tax. In that case it is difficult to see that money is the issue.

For mine, it is time we started to look at what we as taxpayers are receiving for the vast amount of money we invest in the health system. I was always taught that the customer is always right. Perhaps it is time to look at who the customer is and what it is they want. It could be argued that the customer is the patient, and certainly to some degree that is right. It is not hard to work out what the patient wants. They want a good local service, and that is amplified in country Australia. We want the service where and when we can access it. That goes for doctors, hospitals and the whole bit. We accept that not every service can operate everywhere, that communities need a certain minimum size for these services to exist. But where those pre-conditions exist and viable practices are on offer, we want them staffed.

Even further, though, it can be argued that the primary customer is the taxpayer as the funder of the service. The taxpayer pays for the service and it should be what we want, when and where we want it. Why would we as taxpayers, having largely paid for the training of the doctor, then allow the doctor to set up a business in an over-serviced area like North Adelaide? Why would we not, as the purchaser, insist the service be delivered in Kimba, or Elliston, or Hawker, or Coober Pedy or anywhere else where we require the service.

I believe it is time we seriously considered making Medicare provider numbers postcode specific. That is, if doctors wish to access Medicare subsidies, they will have to go to a location where a vacancy exists and not be able to set up anywhere they think looks a nice place to live, and then begin to compete for a finite market. Sure, there would be all kinds of issues surrounding practice assets. Obviously such issues would require extended transition periods, but it is worth remembering many of these traditional assets are not worth what they once were. Just try selling a small practice in a city area, with the advent of superclinics and 24-hour practices, and you will see what I mean. Almost certainly the medical profession will vigorously defend the current arrangements, but, after all, why would we give someone a subsidy to supply a service where they want to live and not where we want the service?

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on clinical training for our health professionals and the importance of the work being undertaken by Health Workforce Australia, and I thank the member for Kingston for the motion. As the representative of a growing community, I recognise the importance of ensuring the continued success of our health system, particularly in terms of our outer metropolitan and rural and regional communities—and I note that it is not just regional communities.

We face many challenges: an ageing population, an increased rate of heart disease, a rise in diabetes, mental health issues and addressing the concerns of those from migrant and Indigenous backgrounds. All of these issues affect my community and every community in Australia.

We need the workforce to be able to effectively address these issues. We need skilled and innovative doctors, nurses and allied health workers on the ground. We need a productive health system that enhances development and advancement. Also, we need to ensure we have health professionals in the areas and specialties where they are needed.

As you can see, providing adequate and comprehensive clinical training is truly about the health and wellbeing of our population and our nation. It is then imperative that we do all we can to proactively plan and assist health training capacity for our health professionals, now and into the future. In doing so, we can create a flexible, innovative and responsive health workforce that can meet the needs of all Australians. Government has a vital role to play in this.

Back in 2009 the National Health Workforce Taskforce identified that an additional ongoing intake of 12,000 students a year would be necessary to meet future health workforce requirements. Without this additional workforce we face a shortage of doctors, nurses and health professionals; an increasingly disparate and unequal health system; and a system where patients, based on nothing more than their postcode, are left behind.

That is why Health Workforce Australia is so important. As a Commonwealth authority, Health Workforce Australia delivers a nationwide and collaborative approach to our health workforce. Since its beginnings, Health Workforce Australia has been working cooperatively with governments and non-government organisations alike. By working with both the health and tertiary sector, they play an important role in planning and training Australia's health workforce.

An important part of this is ensuring greater training opportunities in the healthcare system. It was, for example, Health Workforce Australia that played an active role in increasing the depth of clinical training for our health students. Most recently, figures show a 50 per cent increase in the number of clinical training days in 2012, compared with 2010.

A huge component of this work is the Clinical Training Funding program, which provides funding to ensure there are enough training places to meet Australia's future health workforce needs. In total, the Clinical Training Funding program committed $432.2 million to public and private health services and universities. This assistance has meant the creation of 8,400 new clinical training places for students across 22 individual disciplines. Importantly, the program also actively promotes a balance in the distribution of clinical placements and students in our most underserviced areas. The Clinical Training Funding program is creating Australia's health professionals of the future, where and when we need them. It is key to our success.

Given the importance of this assistance, and the bipartisan support that another member spoke of, it is of great concern that the Assistant Minister for Health has suggested that unallocated funding to support critical clinical training has been frozen by the Abbott government. If they are acutely aware, we call on them to act. This is about the very future of our doctors and our nurses, the very future of our health system and the very future of our nation's wellbeing—and it is December 2013.

Surely the current Minister for Health can see this is too important an issue to play politics with, so I call on the coalition government to immediately make available funding to our universities and health services to ensure clinical placements continue to be available and that our students have greater access to placements now and into the future. It is about the health and wellbeing of every Australian.

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to speak on this motion put forward by the member for Kingston. I would like to note in the time available paragraph one of the motion, which notes the importance of having a well-trained medical workforce, including doctors, nurses and allied health professionals, for the sustainability of our health system. To that I say 'Hear, hear!' But I ask this question: what was the previous Labor government doing over the last six years? We know what they were doing. They cut self-education expenditures. These were part of wider education cuts of about $2.8 billion by the previous government. They capped the amount that someone could claim as a tax rebate for self-education expenditures at $2,000. This had its greatest impact on those earning less than $80,000, as they were the people who made the vast majority of claims for self-education expenditure. Most of that self-education expenditure came from the front line of our health services. We know that it affected doctors and nurses right throughout our health sector. Why did the Labor government do this when they knew it had such a damaging effect on the services that we provide?

Last week, I had the great pleasure of having a discussion with the Chairman of the Board of Paediatric Surgery, a constituent of the electorate of Hughes, a Dr Anthony Dilley. He emphasised how damaging the cuts that Labor made have been. He explained that in his field the average trainee would spend up to $20,000 a year on self-education. What Labor was going to do was penalise and punish these people to pay for Labor's reckless and wasteful spending. And here we have the member for Kingston coming into this chamber and noting the importance of having a well-trained medical workforce. And yet she was one of the members of parliament who before the election was pushing to put a cap of $2,000 on self-education expenditure.

The coalition can proudly say that we are not going ahead with this change. We are going to scrap that cap to ensure that people out there can undertake self-education and try to improve themselves by putting their own resources into training to make themselves better. We are removing that cap. The coalition should be congratulated for that.

The coalition is also going further than that. We are committed to expanding the medical workforce in this country and we are doing it through a variety of measures. Firstly, we are doubling incentives for general practice teaching. Secondly, we are investing in rural and regional teaching infrastructure. The coalition government is going to provide at least 175 grants of up to $300,000 each. Thirdly, the coalition is investing in nursing and the allied health workforce. The coalition will provide 500 additional scholarships for nursing and allied health. These will provide up to $30,000 per scholarship. Fourthly, the coalition will provide an additional $40 million over the next four years to support up to an additional 100 intern places in non-traditional settings in private hospitals. These are the positive steps that the coalition is taking to clean up the Labor government's mess.

There is one other point that I would like to quickly touch on in the debate on this motion, which calls on the government to make money available. Any member of parliament from the opposition who comes in here and talks about the money that the government should make available should firstly explain to the Australian public the mess that they left, the absolute mess that this coalition government has inherited. We face a situation such that very soon this nation is going to be $400 billion in debt. Our interest payments on that debt are over $800 million a month. That is $800 million that comes out of the economy to pay the interest. That is the legacy of the previous Labor government. That must be acknowledged by any speaker on the other side before they come into this parliament asking for expenditure.

Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the House for this opportunity to make a contribution to this debate on behalf of my constituents in Hotham. I was truly disappointed to learn during Senate estimates that the Abbott government is considering taking the Abbott axe to Health Workforce Australia, such an important organisation and one that deals with one of the most significant emerging challenges that we face in this country. We live in a great country, but we face some significant challenges. One challenge that we face is the provision of health care. COAG recognised some of the important issues and that recognition led to the establishment of Health Workforce Australia.

As Australia's population ages, our health needs are changing and growing. We know that in the 1970s only about six per cent of our population was aged over 65. In 2001, that had grown to 13 per cent. By 2060, the percentage of our population over the age of 65 is going to be about 25 per cent. As that occurs, one of the biggest implications will be the change in the nature of and demand for health services. That is what is facing our health workforce. We know that older people are going to need more doctors. But they are also going to need more allied health professionals, including people like physiotherapists and podiatrists, who help our older Australians have a good quality of life. At the same time as we are facing the challenge of an ageing population, we are seeing significant increases in demand due to chronic disease. We are also seeing community expectations about what our health workforce should be able to achieve increase.

You would think that after putting all this together—this explosion in demand for health care—this would be just the moment to invest in planning for an appropriate health workforce for the future. But instead this is the time that we seem to be facing cuts. This is going to be a particular problem for rural and regional Australia, because what we also know is that the ageing of our population is going to be particularly pronounced in the bush. Some regional areas around Australia have increasing numbers of retirees going there to enjoy the rural life in their later years. Also, lots of young adults will leave rural and regional areas and come to the city for education and work opportunities. We know also that there are already not enough doctors and allied health professionals in the bush. This will be a very significant and increasing problem in the future. This is just the moment to invest, especially in rural Australia. But this is just the moment that the government decides that it wants to make cuts in this area.

This debate has particular relevance to my constituents in Hotham. We are very proud to have one of the Holmesglen TAFE campuses in my electorate. Holmesglen is a terrific institution: it has some great ambitions for educating our local population and it has a particular focus on health, particularly the training of allied health professionals. Last year we saw the first students begin their bachelor of nursing at Holmesglen TAFE—there are 40 places there. Many of these students are actually the first in their families to go on to enrol in a bachelor degree.

As part of this program Holmesglen has invested in a clinical simulation facility, which was funded through Health Workforce Australia. It is a fantastic facility comprising four large teaching wards, microbiology and bioscience labs, two simulation suites, a community apartment, an allied health lab, lecture theatres, general teaching space, a cooperative learning centre, computer labs and teaching offices.

The combination of that facility and the funded health training places has opened a lot of doors for Holmesglen and Holmesglen is now in the process of opening a 150-bed private hospital on its Moorabbin campus, complete with an emergency department. So what we see with this Holmesglen example is a real success story of what Health Workforce Australia can achieve with an institution that wants to innovate in this space. The work that these students are being trained to undertake is enormously significant. We want to see more stories like this all around Australia, not fewer. That is why it is critical that funds for clinical training are not frozen but are invested in supporting our health workers, our health system and our communities.

It is a very important subject that we are discussing today and I think it is an important moment to have this conversation, given all the challenges that I have talked about. But we are starting to get to know this government quite well, and what we see is that they throw out a bit of a line, some early criticisms, and then we will hear something in Senate estimates about funds potentially being frozen—then they wait for the reaction and the funding is eventually cut. So today we are seeing a reaction from this side of the House—many speakers on our side who are going to fight this change because we want to preserve the important work that is being done by this important organisation.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to congratulate the member for Kingston for bringing this fine motion to the House. I think one of the most important issues for each and every one of us in our electorates is health and making sure we have the health workforce that is needed to provide the services that the people we represent in this parliament need. Health is such an important issue; there is not a sector of the community that is not affected by health.

I was absolutely horrified to learn that the Clinical Training Fund had been frozen. I had that feeling that it was back to the future because back in 2006, when the now Prime Minister was the health minister, we were constantly fighting issues just like this. We needed to raise the then minister's attention to the issues when we tabled the Beyond the Blame Gamereport at the end of 2006—one, I might add, that he never responded to and probably never read. That report highlighted how important a skilled workforce is to address the health needs of the Australian community. The then health minister and now Prime Minister ignored that report and ignored the call to make sure that we had the trained workforce.

No-one who served in the parliament when the Prime Minister was the health minister would ever be left doubting his commitment to health. It was non-existent. Under him, bulk-billing rates fell. Now they are back up to a record of over 80 per cent but, at that particular time, under 60 per cent of services in the electorate of Shortland electorate were bulk-billed. He did not invest in training more GPs and nurses; whereas when Labor were in power we invested in training more doctors and nurses. We understood that to deliver health services on the ground you had to have a well-trained, well-funded health workforce. You do not get a trained health workforce by freezing the Clinical Training Fund. All that does is lead to a situation where there are insufficient funds to train those doctors who undertake training in our fine universities.

Each and every day we hear of hospitals and communities looking for doctors and for nurses. Unless they can receive proper training, unless the funds for clinical training are released, we are going to have situations like we have had over the years under those on the other side of this House. Back in 2006 there were a wide range of occupations where there were no health professionals available. They were not trained. The only way to address the issue was to bring doctors, nurses, dentists, pharmacists and allied health professionals in from overseas. When Labor were in government we decided we would make that commitment to our health workforce—and making that commitment to having a trained health workforce meant that you had to invest some money. We saw that as a priority, particularly, as has been mentioned in this debate, because we have an ageing population. With an ageing population you have more chronic diseases and greater demands on the healthcare system. It really pointed out to this side of the House that health and health workforce training was a priority.

I have to congratulate Health Workforce Australia on the fine work that they have done. And I would like to finish by saying to those on the other side of this House: it is not good enough—Australians demand a trained health workforce and they demand the right to be able to go and see a health professional when they need to.