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

Many times I've risen to my feet in this place to talk about the doctor shortage, particularly in regional and rural South Australia. Over the last week or so I've been highlighting an issue about which I provided information to the Minister for Health and Aged Care, Mark Butler, early on, soon after he was appointed minister, from a study that had been done on the north-eastern Eyre Peninsula by the Northern Eyre Peninsula Health Alliance, NEPHA, to actually look at a way, a scheme, to bring a group of doctors in to fix this shortage. It needed state and federal government cooperation. Greg Hunt, when he was health minister, funded the study. A total of $300,000 and hundreds of hours of work have gone into this report.

Unfortunately, we fell foul of the state election in South Australia and then the federal election here earlier in the year, and it wasn't acted upon before both of those governments lost their places as governments. So I referred it on to Minister Butler very early on in his term, and at the time I personally said to him, 'I can't expect you to act on this today. I know you've got a lot of things on your desk.' But we're six months in now and I've asked him to respond to NEPHA and to me and to give NEPHA, the group that put together this report, a face-to-face meeting so we can discuss the option that they have put forward.

I've brought it up in a couple of speeches this week because I've had no response at all from the minister. Yesterday, after giving yet another speech in the chamber, I had an email from the minister and—sorry, oops—we sent it to the wrong email address back in September. That may or may not be the case, but in any case it's the contents of the letter that are more concerning to me. Dedicated professionals put hundreds of hours of their time and work into this report, and the minister has recommended that they might like to apply to a number of different programs that the government has. There will be no direct meeting; there was no recognition of the problem—just go and apply for a grant and see if you can get yourself off the ground. That is simply not good enough. That is not an answer; that is a snub to the people who live in rural and regional South Australia.

The minister, who comes from South Australia, is showing no concern at all in this matter. I told him that I would give him plenty of time to assess this matter. I did not want to put pressure on him early on in his time as minister. Now, getting that response yesterday that said that we'd sent it to the wrong email address in September is an absolute insult.