Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are in the midst of a GP crisis in regional parts of Australia, particularly in my electorate of Bendigo. It has not been this bad since the Liberal and National parties were last in government in 2004, when people would say that the books were closed. People are saying that all over again. I regularly get complaints from people who have lived in the area for a long time and their GP is just booked out and from people who have moved into the area and can't find a GP that will add them, so to speak, to the books. They're told that the books are closed.

This crisis is of the government's own making. They really have stuffed up primary health care delivery in this country. The freeze to the Medicare rebate has made it hard for some GPs to break even, forcing some GPs to charge gap fees for people wanting basic consult services. It means that some people delay going to the GP for a regular check-up because of the cost involved. They don't go to the GP until their symptoms or condition is much worse. They then present to the GP with quite chronic health issues. With the Medicare freeze the government has made it harder for GPs. It's simply a lot more expensive for GPs to run their practices today, and Medicare is not keeping up.

The government also hasn't trained enough doctors locally and hasn't put the right incentives in place for doctors to move to the regions. What the government has done in the last little while is too little too late. People are saying to me locally that they don't believe it will work. We have a real problem attracting people to the regions. In my area of Bendigo I am told that locally we are about to have seven GPs retire and a few more move away. That's going to have a huge impact on the ability of GPs to meet demand.

Right now if somebody is wanting a consult in any of the big clinics they almost have to plan to get sick three weeks ahead. It's at least a three-week wait for some people to see a doctor. Kids don't tell you three weeks in advance that they're about to get sick. It's okay if you're going back to a GP, say, to get a script renewed, for a regular check-up or for a consult to manage a chronic health issue. But that's not the majority of cases. The majority of people seek primary health care, seek an appointment with their GP, because they're sick. At the moment the system is so under pressure they're having to wait three weeks. In the middle of a pandemic people can't access the basics of primary health care. As we come out of this pandemic we need to be investing more—more in Medicare, more in primary health care and more in encouraging GPs to move to the regions and to stay.