Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

So, on behalf of the coalition. I would just like to put on record that there are very many people who are not in the coalition who have close links with and knowledge of what is happening in rural and regional Australia. I know that Senator Stephens, who is sitting there, will be able to speak. I do not know whether she is an academic, a politician and a farmer, or how it all works together. Certainly, both sides of my own family have a long history of farming on the Darling Downs in Queensland. Many of my cousins are still there and I think that they would be a little surprised to hear that just because I have chosen to be a representative of the Australian Labor Party I have somehow lost all the knowledge, support and nurturing that my family have given me throughout my life to now. I am worried that there is some inference being made that your political beliefs automatically except you from particular knowledge and awareness of what is happening in the community.

When the election was called, when we were in that process and when the election result was known, Mr Rudd in accepting the choice of the Australian people made many comments that he was there as a representative of all Australians and that he was not going to be representing a segment of the community. Our policies, those which we are putting forward now in response to the election result, actually take account of the needs and concerns of all Australians. The urgency motion that we have before us talks particularly about rural Australia and, whilst from my point of view I will be talking about some of the things we have done for health, the way all policies that are developed by our party need to look at their impact on all Australians. It is really difficult to find one issue that you can segment and about which you can say, ‘That only has an effect on people who live in that part of the world,’ because there are knock-on effects. There are always decisions made in one part of any policy agenda which will inevitably roll over to others. But in the time that I have I want to put on record in this debate here in the Senate again—because Senator Sterle had talked about infrastructure and roads—some of the things that the Australian Labor Party has done particularly for those members of our community who happen to live in rural or regional Australia.

One of the things we did was to commission an immediate audit of the workplace issues around health in our country—and we know that this has been a discussion point for many years. There is not a finger-pointing game or a blame game about this. What we are saying is that there has been a wealth of anecdotal knowledge that there have been shortages across all areas of the medical workforce across Australia but in particular in rural Australia. So the incoming government automatically commissioned an audit to find out what was happening in rural and regional Australia, and the results were no surprise. It clearly noted that there were massive shortages across all elements of the medical workforce. We now have that data and we have released the audit report.

I am worried about why people on the other side of this place seem to be so appalled by the idea of having reviews or taking things into consideration, because I thought that was our job—to look at what was happening, to see what has been going on and then to work out policy that responds to that. With this audit we have put on record what many people knew and what we had been told by people from the National Rural Health Alliance—that there were shortages, that there were insufficient doctors, insufficient nurses and insufficient medical support workers in areas such as radiography and physiotherapy and in all those professions to provide the services which all Australians need. As a result of that audit, we now have the record. We have the baseline data that indicates where the shortages are across Australia and what we are going to do about them.

Only recently we created a new section in the Department of Health and Ageing which has a full focus on issues of rural health. We now have the Office of Rural Health—since 1 July 2008—and that came about much as a result of that focus on what the workforce areas were. In announcing this new office in the overall Department of Health and Ageing, the Minister for Health and Ageing said that this new Office of Rural Health would be there specifically to drive reform in the area of rural health.

One of the clear issues has been the basis of the health system when looking at allocation of resources. It has been a classification system which has been in place in the department of health for many years. We have had many discussions at Senate estimates about exactly how the RRMA system operates and whether an area, if it is on one side of a border, will get special treatment in the allocation of resources. We are going to have a review of this system—and I say that proudly—because we want to see what many people have been questioning for many years. We want to know exactly whether the RRMA system that was introduced in the past is the most effective mechanism to provide the basis for classification into the future. We are going to see if the RRMA process effectively responds to the incentives in the rural health policy so that we can make sure that the current population figures and areas of need are defined—that this basic model works so that the basis on which allocation of resources is made is accurate. That came out of the audit, and that will be the responsibility of the Office of Rural Health.

We are going to look at the existing programs that support rural health professionals and see whether that can be done better. In fact, it has to be done better because it is not working well now. We are not effectively providing support to the professionals who choose to work in the bush, because they are not staying. We also know that they are ageing, and people are questioning whether it is going to be a long-term process.

Through the Office of Rural Health, we are going to oversee the significant contribution of funding that the government has already made to rural health. One result of the knowledge about the workforce is a particular focus on the workforce. This government is going to spend about $4.6 million over four years to place an extra 600 medical students in rural or remote communities as part of their on-the-job training. As we have said for many years, that will give people who have chosen to work in the medical field real-life experience working in rural areas. You have to build up confidence and knowledge based on real experience to make choices about where you are going to work in the future, and this is actually looking at medical students now.

There is an expectation that the same kind of on-the-job training could be provided across a whole range of medical areas, and certainly one of my hopes is that it will be provided in the area of mental health. I hope we will be able to encourage people in the psychology and psychiatry areas to move into the rural areas so that they can provide immediate support there. These are the kinds of issues that have been raised by a number of people, because there is no ignorance about what the challenges and the needs are. Certainly in recent years, with the horrific impact of the drought and market pressures on people who are living in regional areas, the Australian community as a whole must be aware of what is happening in those areas and one element of the government’s response must be to provide effective medical services.

We are looking at scholarships in the area of rural clinical placement. We are looking at expanding the medical specialist outreach program, one we have talked about many times in the community affairs area, to allow specialist services to provide services in people’s own homes. I want to particularly mention the extra money provided for the Jane McGrath Foundation—I have talked about this before—and that is in the area of cancer nurses.

Consistently there is an acknowledgement that extra resources need to be placed in rural areas, but I do caution anyone believing that they have all the answers or that they can label people by what they see as exactly what their knowledge and concerns are. This government is committed to providing support across a whole range of areas to people who live in rural areas, but I want to say that I think that is a job for all of us. Just because we are on this side of the chamber does not mean that we do not have close ties with and an understanding of rural Australia.