Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

So the Labor Party initiated the Senate inquiry into GP shortages in the last parliament. We heard mountains and mountains of evidence from people not being able to see a GP at all, about having to wait many months for an appointment, having to travel hours when they finally do get to see one. This is why Labor has deliberately not changed the regional incentive payments that doctors receive for working in remote Australia. It's why we recognise the importance of providing additional incentives for doctors to work in those remote and regional communities. So I find this extraordinary that Senator Chandler, now that she's lost the power of being in government on these issues, suddenly appears interested in these issues.

The government funds a range of program incentives to encourage GPs to relocate and work there, in addition to the distribution priority area program. So, while we have this architecture, we know that we have to prioritise improving it. We have our Strengthening Medicare Taskforce now. This task force met last Friday. It's tasked with finding the best ways to boost affordability, improve access and deliver better support for patients, especially for payments with ongoing and chronic illnesses. This work, their work and their findings, will be backed by the $750 million Strengthening Medicare Fund.

We know that our health professionals have worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic. They are working tirelessly now. I have two aged parents—one of whom has significant health conditions—who are at home in quarantine, as they recently tested positive with COVID. But they have a good GP that's checking in on them, and they also have the resourcing of the state government. We know it's critically important that we resource our doctors to look after Australians, to provide them the care they need. This is, in particular, why we are investing some $220 million in GP practices around Australia. This will be incredibly important to rural and regional Australia.

We also have a plan to invest $146 million to attract health workers to, and retain them in, rural and regional Australia. This includes improving training and incentive programs and supporting the development of innovative models of multidisciplinary care. We are going to boost workforce incentives for rural and regional GPs to support the engagements of nurses, allied health and other health professionals and provide multidisciplinary team based care—also critically important. We are also going to expand the innovative models of the collaborative care program across rural and regional Australia, because we know support to retain our rural health professionals is absolutely critical.

There are so many practical steps that governments can and should take to support the rural and regional workforce here in Australia. This includes, for example, a constituent case that recently came through my office, where the only psychiatrist in the Pilbara in Western Australia that is there to service and is qualified to meet the needs of children can't stay in Australia because she has a child with autism. Clearly the state government is now making appeals to the Commonwealth government, saying, 'These are the kinds of issues that we need to fix.' And I know, sitting on the government benches, that these are indeed the kinds of issues that we need to fix and that your government, on a day-to-day basis, was absolutely missing in action on.

We are also here to expand the John Flynn Prevocational Doctor Program to more than 1,000 placements in rural and regional Australia per year and strengthen rural generalist and GP registrar training as well as provide Australians access to universal, prompt, world-class medical care—something that has been ignored by those opposite for too long. We want to see our rural and regional communities right around Australia get the access they deserve—access, like I said, to universal, prompt, world-class medical care. No-one in our nation deserves to face a multiyear wait for vital treatments simply due to where they live.

Whilst I can see that those opposite recognise these issues now that they're in opposition, I am very pleased to stand up here and debate them on it. You were silent for eight years on all these issues. Not once did I come in here and see you prioritise these needs. Instead, we got the glib 'all announcement and no delivery'. The proof will be in the pudding. We are early in our term and we know we have to get on and implement these measures, whereas those opposite were all announcement and no delivery year after year. We are here with a commitment in the Labor Party to building our public healthcare system right across remote and regional Australia. (Time expired)