Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health and Aged Care. According to the National Rural Health Alliance, regional Australians receive $848 less per year in health spend than metropolitan Australians do—an expenditure gap of $6.55 billion. How will the government urgently address this alarming healthcare spending inequity?

Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank my fellow South Australian the member for Mayo for that question and our ongoing dialogue on delivering better health care, aged care and other services in her beautiful electorate through the Adelaide Hills, the Fleurieu Peninsula and many more areas besides. Certainly, one of our discussions has been about the challenges in accessing good-quality, affordable health care the further away you get from our nation's GPOs. It's not just an issue in rural and regional Australia; increasingly, this is a challenge in some of our outer-suburban and peri-urban areas, and it's one we are very focused on.

I could say a few things about the ways in which we're seeking to address that. First of all, as I think the member for Mayo and I have discussed, we are right near the end stage of the review we're currently undertaking about the distribution rules to ensure that all areas have access to doctors and other health professionals as well. That has been a review in which the National Rural Health Alliance and a range of other rural health groups—ACRRM, the rural doctors' college, and many others besides—have participated in very fully. From our first budget, in October 2022, we increased the incentives that are available for doctors to go and practice in rural and regional Australia. We lifted those incentives in dollar terms, and we expanded them in terms of the skills that doctors might be able to take to rural and regional Australia, with a particular emphasis on ensuring skills around emergency medicine, obstetrics and mental health. They were given greater incentives to move out of our major cities and into the rural area.

I keep getting interjections from the Leader of the Nationals, Mr Speaker. It would be nice if he asked a question about rural health, instead of allowing every single question for this entire week to be about the Middle East—instead of health issues in rural and regional Australia. Perhaps, if the Leader of the Nationals were a bit interested, he would ask a question about it.

But I come back to the question from the member for Mayo. I'd make this point as well. As the member for Mayo knows, we tripled the bulk-billing incentive for visits to the doctor, because I know that bulk-billing rates have been declining more sharply in rural and regional Australia than in urban Australia. I'm very pleased to say that the biggest increases to bulk-billing for GP visits in the eight months that that incentive has been operating have been in rural and regional Australia. I am not sure of the latest data, but the member for Mayo's electorate has seen either the biggest or the second-biggest increase in GP bulk-billing rates of any electorate in this parliament over the last eight months. What that does for a standard consult in rural and regional Australia is lift the income for those doctors by 50 per cent. We know there is more to do, but I appreciate at least the member for Mayo— (Time expired)