Michelle Landry (Capricornia, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australians who live in regional, rural and remote areas have poorer access to health care yet have higher reported rates of chronic diseases, diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and mental health problems. There is also a higher incidence of low birth weight babies and poor antenatal and postnatal health. Whilst Australia has plenty of doctors, most work in metropolitan areas, at a ratio of 4.3 doctors per 1,000 people. Yet those who live in regional and remote areas only have access to 2.7 doctors per 1,000 people. My electorate of Capricornia is no exception to this trend. This region, like so many others, is under extreme pressure from lack of doctors, with waiting lists for general practitioners and specialist doctors growing increasingly worse month after month.

Three hundred and eighty kilometres to the west of Rockhampton is the rural town of Clermont. The community of Clermont has a population of 3,000 and the highest-aged population per capita in Australia. This community is experiencing one of the most acute doctor shortages seen anywhere in the country. Up until recently Clermont had one GP to look after quite a few thousand locals. Dr Sarah McLay worked tirelessly, seven days a week, to take care of the community she loved. Her struggle to find a second doctor to ease her burden came to dead ends at every turn. The former coalition government funded a $500,000 recruitment package to encourage a doctor to practice rurally and ease the pressure on the remote health system.

The health outcomes for those living in remote Capricornia have never been more dire. Rockhampton and Capricorn Coast locals are also feeling the pressure of the regional doctor shortage, with many waiting weeks to see their GP. This region has a population over 104,000. It is shameful that the level of doctors is so low. The local Rockhampton Hospital emergency department has now become the last choice for people who are not able to get into a GP, further compounding the ramping issues currently being experienced.

It is not just general practice doctor shortages our region is experiencing but also access to specialist doctors. Rockhampton Hospital provides medical services through the public system for over 230,000 people in Central Queensland and is the main referral hospital for this area. The sheer number of people requiring access to health services is drowning the hospital doctors in work. One constituent reported to me she waited over 300 days to see a rheumatology specialist and suffered with pain while waiting for treatment. Another had her hip replacement surgery cancelled three times; once on the day of the surgery due to the anaesthetist being unavailable that day and having no replacement. The number of anaesthetists in the Rockhampton region is at dangerously low levels, and people are waiting up to a year for surgery.

On 21 July Labor inflicted further pressure on the struggling regional health system by expanding the automatic distribution priority area classification with immediate effect. As a result of Labor's distribution priority area changes, outer metropolitan suburbs have the same workforce priority status as rural and remote parts of Australia. The changes this government has made to the distribution priority areas have allowed international medical graduates to work in the peri-urban areas with the same incentives as if they were working in regional or remote locations. This bad policy change has directed doctors away from the areas in critical need. As a result of Labor's decision to expand the areas of MM2 and some MM1 classification, it is pulling doctors away from rural communities who desperately need medical services. These changes have made it harder for those living in regional, regional and remote areas to find a doctor, and it is making it less attractive to encourage a tree change in regional Australia.

Labor's city-centric policies are pushing the divide between city and country even wider. By giving everyone access to the distribution priority area tool, it has completely undermined its effectiveness as a workforce distribution measure and has made it harder for areas with lower access to GP services to recruit and retain the doctors that they need. The distribution priority area classification was created in 2019 to give areas in genuine need of assistance another tool to help recruit more GPs from a finite pool of overseas trained doctors. In one flick of the pen, this government is bleeding the regions dry of much needed doctors. A policy focus on training new doctors in the regions and incentivising working in these communities is what regional Australia needs. The longer this government drags its feet on regional health policies, the worse the health outcomes are for the 28 per cent of the population who live in regional, rural or remote Australia.