Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to place on record and to proudly boast of the support that this federal government has provided to people in the Northern Territory when it comes to the provision of health services.

On 9 June this year I was delighted to accompany Prime Minister Julia Gillard, my Territorian colleague the Minister for Indigenous Health and minister for other areas, Warren Snowdon, the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, Paul Henderson, and the Northern Territory Minister for Health, Kon Vatskalis, in opening a wonderful new medical teaching and education centre in Darwin. Based at Charles Darwin University and operated in partnership with South Australia's Flinders University, this centre will for the first time enable students to undertake an entire medical degree in the Northern Territory.

The centre will play a crucial role in providing training support for medical students during their first two years under the new Flinders University Northern Territory Medical Program. The Northern Territory Medical Program has been made possible by capital funding from this government of $27.8 million over three years, $14 million of which will fund the new teaching and education centre. A further $6.6 million will be provided over the next four years for operational costs. The Northern Territory government is putting another $2.2 million a year towards the recurrent costs of training these doctors and pharmacists. This program is helping to train more Indigenous doctors to work in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, which suffer some of the worst GP medical workforce shortages in the country.

What is absolutely fantastic about this new facility is that we can now grow our own doctors in the Northern Territory. Students will no longer have to leave the Territory and their homes to become a doctor. For many kids in school aspiring to be doctors, the practicalities have become much less challenging. As well as being great for future students, by association, this is a great step forward for the future of health services in the Northern Territory. I have heard the Chief Minister champion many times—and with his generosity I will reiterate his sentiments this evening—the fact that, for the very first time in the Northern Territory, whether you are Indigenous or non-Indigenous, you can now go to preschool, primary school, secondary school and then university and come out as a qualified doctor. For us that is a great step forward when it comes to the provision of health services in the Territory.

Research has long told us that the quality of a training and educational experience is very important in determining future locational choice. What this means, we would hope, is that a doctor trained in the Territory is much more likely to remain and practise in the Territory. And we desperately need more of them. Moreover, the new centre and its medical program is going to have a focus on Indigenous health and the needs of Indigenous communities. It is already showing dividends for the Northern Territory. Currently, only 1.6 per cent of the national health workforce is made up of Indigenous people. When the NT Medical Program commenced this year, 24 students began the course, of whom 10 are Indigen­ous, with enrolments increasing to 40 per year in the future.

This facility, and its focused program, will make a real difference to the way in which we deliver health care across the Northern Territory. Remote Australia is sorely in need of more doctors and healthcare workers. I am quite confident that a good proportion of the 24 students currently enrolled will end up working in the Northern Territory, and hopefully in the bush, where they are most needed. I have now had the pleasure of meeting these students twice—on the very first day they started this course in February and, of course, back in June when we opened the physical location in which they now continue their course. Already, several of them have indicated to me their desire to stay in the Northern Territory once they have completed their training. This is the start of making a tremendous difference to health outcomes for Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory.

Even if not all of the students end up working in the bush or going to remote communities, it will be just as valuable if they choose to work in Darwin, Katherine or Alice Springs. The Royal Darwin Hospital's Emergency Department is the busiest in the country, and this is largely because of a shortage of GP services in Darwin and Palmerston. This new facility at Charles Darwin University will help take pressure off Territory hospitals by producing more GPs for the Territory.

I also add that the technology in this new centre is state-of-the-art. Our first-year students enrolled in this combined course with Flinders University watch and participate in lectures given at Flinders University with 100 or so other first-year students by teleconferencing over the internet. They now have the capacity to watch what is happening at a hospital in Adelaide or at Flinders University via the internet techniques and the state-of-the-art technology that has been put into this new medical facility. So it is not only forging a path when it comes to training more Indigenous and non-Indigenous doctors for the Northern Territory but it is also state-of-the-art when it comes to tele-health, e-health and internet service facilities for educational provision.

Also, we have the Palmerston Superclinic, another initiative of this government that is already starting to take pressure off our hospital. The Palmerston Superclinic will be a training centre for students who are at the medical school at CDU. The general practice side of the superclinic places an emphasis on providing the best care to the patients as well as teaching the new generation of doctors. It provides fantastic hands-on learning oppor­tunities to medical students in a clinical environment, and an incentive to studying, training and ultimately working in the Territory.

Of course, if the opposition had their way, there would be no superclinic in Palmerston and there would be no funding for the dedicated placements in regional and remote Australia because they campaigned against that at the last election. This silly policy decision by the opposition would have negatively impacted the Northern Territory for generations. In fact, one of the reasons we are struggling for doctors today is that the Howard government capped the number of places across the country for students to study medicine. But this government's national health reform ensures doctors, nurses and allied health professionals are trained and equipped to work in areas where they are most needed. This new facility is an important part of our aspiration to train 6,000 more doctors in Australia.

The Gillard Labor government is serious about investing in health, particularly in the bush. The Northern Territory got a further $150 million surcharge in health infra­structure, a massive boost that will not only provide much needed health infrastructure but also have the added benefit of stimu­lating the local economy and creating jobs. Through the Health and Hospitals Fund, the federal government is providing $70 million to go towards a hospital for Palmerston, with the Northern Territory government providing the additional $40 million. Not only will the Palmerston hospital reduce patient waiting times, encourage patients to get treatment and reduce the number of hospital admis­sions but it will also focus on improving Indigenous health. The Palmerston hospital will be tailored to meet the needs of people in the Top End, including culturally appropriate services and the capacity to train Aboriginal support workers as well as medical, nursing and allied health staff.

Of course, the rest of the Territory has not been forgotten either. From the health infrastructure surcharge we will see $50.29 million invested in seven new primary healthcare clinics in remote communities: at Robinson River, at Ngukurr, at Canteen Creek, at Numbulwar, at Elliott, at Galiwinku and at Ntaria—a massive injection for the provision of health services for Indigenous people in those communities. Also included in this funding are four upgrades to existing clinics at Titjikala, Papunya, Maningrida and Docker River. Laynhapuy Homelands Association will receive a $623,000 grant out of the Health and Hospitals Fund to build new health facilities in three East Arnhem communities.

These investments in health across the territory are crucial to working towards closing the gap on Indigenous disadvantage. By educating and training Territory doctors in Territory schools and our own Territory university medical facility, we will be growing our own much-needed medical workforce, combined with the injection of capital funds to ensure that those remote communities in the Northern Territory have the best equipped and most modern clinics they can get access to. We are uniquely placed to start to tackle the health challenges in the Northern Territory and commit to truly closing that gap.