Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Minister for Regional Services) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Williams, for the question. The Liberal-National government has a vision to see all Australians have access to high-quality health services, no matter where they live. But high-quality health service delivery actually requires highly trained experts out of capital cities. Our $550 million Stronger Rural Health Strategy will deliver thousands more doctors, thousands more nurses and hundreds more allied health professionals to rural and regional Australia. This is a 10-year strategy that is only possible because of Australia's strong economic position.

But this is not all that we're doing. The Liberal and National government are not content just to deliver the most transformational package for general practice training in over three decades; we're also taking this one step further. Last month, I convened the first-ever national summit on rural medical specialist training to continue our work in revolutionising how we train our doctors and specialists to ensure we have more opportunity for them to work in our regions, because we know from the research that this will mean they're more likely to practice out in the regions.

The summit heard from leaders in the field: the Australian Medical Association; the medical deans association; eight regional universities offering medical training; the specialist colleges, which are so integral to this working—the physicians, radiologists, pathologists et cetera; and our states and territories. Delivery of medical specialist training out in the regions will require a hand-in-glove approach with our state and territory governments because they actually run public hospitals. We need to make sure that they have training positions out in the regions.

From the summit there were clear aims and goals to encourage collaboration, particularly between our states, territories and the Commonwealth and the training colleges to develop support for rural medical trainees, ensuring job security and pathways for a successful and prosperous medical specialist career in the regions.