Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Three years ago the Morrison government took away the ability of Blue Mountains medical practices to attract GPs, when the entire mountains east of Blackheath was stripped of its priority status. I've been proud to announce that Labor will fix that and make it easier to attract more GPs by allowing the recruitment of overseas trained and bonded medical program doctors. If elected, Labor will designate the Katoomba-Springwood GP catchment, which is the whole of the Blue Mountains LGA, as a distribution priority area for GPs. It's a significant step towards helping our GPs survive, because right now they're under pressure like I've never seen. They were under pressure before the messy COVID vaccine rollout. A whole lot of them are nearing retirement, but of course the last two years have made things almost unbearable for both them and their GP practice teams with the phone calls, the announcements they see on TV and their inability to take a day off, let alone have a holiday.

GPs worry about their patients: about the pap smears that aren't being done, about the diabetes that isn't being monitored and about the early intervention that just isn't happening because of the volume of vaccines they've been asked to deliver with no hubs in our Blue Mountains community. They worry about the pressure on their practice nurses and their front desk staff, who quite frankly never signed up to have the rudeness that they've experienced. We will make it easier for people to see a GP in the Blue Mountains. (Time expired.)