Russell Trood (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Wong, it is not a question of buying your way in—it is giving an opportunity to students to get access to universities who would not otherwise have it, and I would have thought you would have been enthusiastic about that. I thought you would have been particularly enthusiastic given the fact that your comrades in Queensland are desperate to increase the number of people involved in medical education—which is precisely what this decision does and will do over the next couple of years.

Let me go a little further, because the problem in medical education in this country is not just about students getting into universities. There is a wider problem and it is a problem which needs addressing and, sadly, it is a problem which cannot easily be resolved. Sadly, it is one which is an affliction of the Queensland health system and all the troubles that now beset it. It is all right to increase the number of medical places in universities, and that is desirable, but students in medical schools of course need in-house training. They need training in hospitals—they need the opportunity, as it were, to get their hands dirty. If they are not given that opportunity within medical schools, and also to be involved in teaching and in learning expertise within universities then they are no good to the community.

That is the task for the Beattie government—it has to provide those opportunities not just in medical schools. We do not just have to have the opportunities in medical schools, we have to have the opportunities in hospitals and, until such time as those opportunities are available—not just for doctors but also for the allied health professionals: the nurses, the physiotherapists, the radiographers et cetera—then we are not likely to have a fully functioning medical system. That is a need which the Beattie government needs to address. It is a problem which will exist as long as there are hospitals across the state which are at excess capacity and where there are insufficient opportunities for medical students to gain training. So, the case in relation to this disallowance collapses at every level and I assert the fact that the government opposes this motion of disallowance.