Andrew Gee (Calare, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the health minister. The rural doctor shortage crisis is having devastating consequences for the health of our residents in central-western New South Wales. Gulgong no longer has any doctors, practices in communities like Mudgee, Molong and Canowindra have closed their books to new patients, and it takes two months to see a doctor in Wellington. What are you doing to fix his appalling situation, and will you personally visit our region and meet with local doctors and concerned residents to see the shocking effects this crisis is having?

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

I thank the member for his question and his interest, obviously, in his community broadly but particularly the challenges in delivering good-quality health care in regional Australia. We've had a couple of discussions about this already.

Let me say a little bit about what we're trying do to address, frankly, a real shortage of doctors in rural Australia. We've delivered more doctors over the last couple of years. The last two years have seen the biggest increase in doctor numbers in a decade. Now, that's not fixing every problem in every single community, but more doctors, more bulk-billing and more urgent care clinics are starting to turn around the challenges that we inherited. But we know that there are a range of different levers we need to pull.

We put in place in our first budget a range of increased incentives for doctors to practise in communities like the member's community—a range of dollar incentives that are very significant and particularly reward doctors moving to regional Australia with the skills that we need. They might be emergency management skills, they might be mental health skills or they might be obstetrician and gynaecologist skills.

We've also, through the minister for education, put in place very significant HELP debt relief for medical and nursing graduates who move to regional Australia. Depending on the level of regionality, they will have very significant reductions in their university debt or student debt. We've put in place a number of single employer model trials, including in New South Wales, to try and deal with the industrial disadvantages that GP registrars face in regional communities compared to their hospital based equivalents as well.

The bulk-billing changes that we put in place 12 months ago are benefiting regional Australia more than our cities. We know that about 40 per cent of the more than five million additional free visits to a doctor that took place over the last 12 months happened in regional Australia.

We know there is more to do. We've got GP incentive funds that are seeking to plug some of the holes that the member just referred to. I met with a terrific delegation from North Queensland earlier today, where that has been able to address the sorts of challenges the member has talked about. I'm more than happy to sit down directly with the member, as I have done with, for example, the member for Kennedy to deal with the doctor shortage in Cardwell and Mission Beach in Queensland. If the sort of approach that we took there can help with the member's community, I'm more than happy to sit down with him, and I'll reach out soon.