Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to respond in part to some of the comments that we've just heard from Senator Seselja, who is in here decrying everyone but this government. In this constant failure to attach to reality, those in this government keep talking as if they haven't been in government. All the problems that have been described 'will be far worse if we get change', but this is the third term of a government that is failing Australians.

Today, I want to speak to the state of rural health care, particularly in our great state of New South Wales. It's in a mess. People cannot get the care that they need in so many of our communities. Under 10 years of coalition government in New South Wales, and eight years of the federal government under Mr Abbott, Mr Turnbull and Mr Morrison, the reality is we've had this change of three different leaders but the same bad policy. The health outcomes for those who call rural and remote Australia their home have plummeted—that's whether they've got a Liberal or a National Party member representing them. They are not doing their job. They are not doing their job in this place. They are not standing up for those local communities.

There was a New South Wales parliament inquiry into health outcomes and access to health and hospital services in rural, regional and remote New South Wales, and what it discovered was truly shocking. Some people would remember the report from earlier this year, which told tales of neglect and government ignorance of the suffering that has been inflicted on the communities across New South Wales. In Deniliquin, we heard that midwives wouldn't give birth in their own maternity ward, because they knew. We heard of how staff shortages meant that tea ladies were looking after infants and that community members were travelling to Echuca, across the border and into Victoria, because the New South Wales health system wasn't delivering for them. I've heard senators in this place disrespectfully playing with the name of the Premier of Victoria, making a joke of what's going on in terms of access to services, and the reality is it's far better if you get sick in Victoria than it is if you get sick in New South Wales. It's just not good enough.

In Trundle, a little four-year-old child had to wait for one year to get a specialist appointment in Newcastle—and that's not even a small community. That is a big, big town, a city with a long history of well and truly over 150 years. Then, waiting for a year to get an appointment, they had to wait another three months to get a diagnosis of cancer. I don't know how anybody who's listening to this across the nation, or anybody in this chamber, could fail to have empathy for a family that had been on that kind of a dystopian health journey: to not be able to get a diagnosis and then, finally, after a delay, finding out it's cancer.

We know that the reality of people accessing services through trying to get into their GP is in decay. In over 40 towns in western New South Wales, the predictions are that there might not be a GP in the next 10 to 15 years. There are towns that are really, really struggling right now. Even on the Central Coast, where I live—just over 100 kilometres from Sydney—people cannot get in to see their GP. About 60 GP registrar places have been made available, which is not very many if you get north of the border. I call it the border with Sydney, but it's the Brooklyn Bridge over the Hawkesbury River. Once you get north of that you're in my home country, the land of the Darkinyung and the Kuringgai people. You get there and you go all the way up to Armidale for this health district. It's not a district; it's a massive landmass. And the reality is that, of 60 places offered for GPs, often only about 40 take it—for a training session, for a year. Do you know one of the reasons why they don't go there? They can't get their own family into a GP. That is the description of a death spiral for access to GPs, and that's why Labor has pushed for an inquiry. The Senate will be on the Central Coast on 14 December, hearing from local people about how diabolically hard it is, after eight years of federal government and 10 years of state Liberal government, to try and actually get something as basic as access to your local doctor.

This situation is clearly untenable. Our rural and remote healthcare system is absolutely buckling under the weight of multiple longstanding issues. Staffing shortages, distances and the lack of community transport services are all chronic issues and are endemic to the rural healthcare system. They're all things that no individual can fix. Only a government can fix these things, and a government that cared would have fixed them, instead of them leading to further and further decay of the system, and that's what we've seen under the Liberal government in New South Wales for 10 years and the Liberal government at a federal level for eight years.

Local governments are being forced to subsidise local medical centres. They're paying for doctors and keeping those vital medical services in town, because the federal and state governments have failed in their jobs. That is putting a really great strain on already overburdened budgets from ratepayers. It's a small rate base in rural Australia. The economics of it just don't work, and the governments just walk away and walk away. And they've been walking away for so long that now people can't walk into a GP.

Twenty-one local councils were named in Local Government NSW's submission, including Forbes, Carrathool, Bourke, Wagga Wagga, Coonamble, Edward River, Gilgandra, Gunnedah, Gwydir, Hay, the Lachlan Shire, Murrumbidgee, Narrandera, Temora, Upper Lachlan and the Wentworth Shire Council—all of those within my duty seats, and all of them councils paying thousands, tens of thousands and in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars to fill the gap in the current healthcare services. All of the people in every single one of those great places across New South Wales deserve better. Their Liberal National representatives in this place have not stood up for them, and the proof of the failure of representation is in their everyday experiences with their families and with the people they love and work with.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data shows that people living in rural and remote areas have a higher rate of hospitalisation, a higher rate of mortality, a higher rate of injury, and poorer access to and a higher rate of use of primary healthcare services than those living in metropolitan areas. In rural and remote communities, the AIHW notes that potentially preventable hospitalisation rates were as much as 2½ times as high as those in major cities, and that's because the system and the structure are not there to support access to health.

Inequality—under this government, seeking a fourth term, a second decade of opportunity to ruin the nation. Inequality due to your postcode is now endemic in our system. We have to work and we have to change the government if we are to erase the injustices imposed by the tyranny of distance overseen by this government. Beautiful and productive regions of Australia and the important industries they support are the engine room of the Australian economy. They shouldn't be forced to travel for eight hours to get to a doctor for essential health care. (Time expired)

Debate interrupted.