Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this very important MPI brought before the chamber by Senator Chandler. From day one, the Albanese Labor government proved that they do not care about regional Australia. They have proven this time and again, and we're only two months into this government.

Let me give you the clearest example of this. Last week the Albanese Labor government decided to axe the Joint Standing Committee on Northern Australia and the Office of Northern Australia. They abandoned Northern Australia on day one of parliament. One of our key regional areas across Australia is in the north. They made their view on the importance of rural and regional Australia very clear; that is, that they do not care about rural and regional Australia. Now, by their failure to act or to outline any meaningful plan to address rural and regional workforce shortages in the health sector, they continue to fail our rural and regional communities.

Our rural and regional communities face significant challenges and inequalities. There is still a great divide between the city and the country. As my colleague in the other place the member for Calare, Mr Gee, said only yesterday, there is a divide in income opportunities and outcomes, and if you live in a country area, your income will not be as high as if you lived in the city. There is a divide in educational opportunities between the city and the country, and there is a divide in health outcomes. What do we know? The cold hard truth is that the further you live away from the city, the younger you will die. The average life expectancy in the country is lower than in the city. It has been noted by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare that life expectancy decreases with remoteness. They've also noted that potentially avoidable hospitalisations can be 2.5 times higher in remote areas than in cities. Australians living in remote communities face higher levels of difficulty in accessing medical services, including GPs. And while some of the reasons for this are outside of the control of the healthcare sector, access to health services plays an important part.

This is about to get much, much more difficult for our rural and regional Australians. We know that the availability of medical practitioners—particularly GPs—has a direct impact on the health outcomes in regional, rural and remote Australia. This is why we have Distribution Priority Areas—to help identify areas in regional, rural and remote communities with unmet needs, and which are lacking important access to services by GPs. There are benefits to having DPA status. It ensures that these areas, which are lacking access to GP services, are looked after, by bringing in trained medical practitioners from overseas and participants in the Bonded Medical Program and requiring them to set up in these areas to help reduce that division between the city and the country. The DPA is crucial to the rural healthcare system, and it's the backbone of these communities.

Now, despite strong opposition from rural doctors, the Albanese Labor government is pushing ahead with their 'ill-informed' plan—as it was described by the Rural Doctors Association of Australia—to expand distribution priority areas to include peri-urban and outer metro areas. Labor have now expanded DPAs to include large regional centres and outer metro areas. They are taking away from our rural and regional communities, abandoning patients in rural and regional communities, who will be left with no access to services that are close to their homes—no access at all. They're 'robbing Peter to pay Paul'—that's how the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners described it, because the RACGP know that there is an extreme risk that rural and regional communities will lose doctors as they take up positions that are closer to the cities.

I mean, you can't blame them, really, if you're not providing those incentives and that direct support that is available to ensure that we are attracting good doctors into these remote and regional settings. This is an unintended and unwanted consequence of this ill-informed decision made by an Albanese Labor government. Despite what they've been told by those working in our rural and regional healthcare sector, they're persisting with this policy. What they should be doing is looking to encourage more of our medical students and our future doctors to choose general practice as their career, whether this is through cutting red tape or making easier and more attractive career pathways for our students. Whatever it is, they will not solve the GP shortage in rural and regional Australia by taking away from our rural and regional communities.

In the brief time that I have remaining in this MPI discussion, I want to give a shout-out to the More Than Mining campaign. This is a particular initiative that's been driven primarily by the mining industry communities, or communities that have resources-sector jobs that are close by. They're advocating for a change to how we treat the fringe benefits tax. One of the big issues in attracting staff in these areas is housing and access to affordable housing, particularly in a market that's cyclical because of the boom and bust cycle. In this moment here, in the remaining time for this MPI—the 30 seconds that I've got left—I just want to give a shout-out to those that have been advocating for this program. I remain committed to this. I think they've got some innovative ideas. Whether it's precisely the solution that they've come up with or, quite possibly, a variation of that, I think it's something that we should look closely at in enabling people that are choosing to put their roots down in regional communities to get a tax benefit in choosing to purchase homes and rent homes in these places. To increase the pool of homes that are available, to increase the stock that's available, could be a good way of actually attracting staff into these areas. I want to commend the More Than Mining campaign and the communities that have been supporting it.