Marielle Smith (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm also rising today to make a few brief remarks on measures within the Higher Education Support Amendment (2022 Measures No. 1) Bill 2022. Particularly, I want to acknowledge the measures within this bill that work to encourage doctors and nurse practitioners to live and work in rural, remote and very remote areas in Australia. This bill will allow for eligible doctors and nurse practitioners to have their HELP debts reduced or wiped if they live and work in those areas for a period based on the length of their degree.

I rise today to welcome these initiatives as part of the bill because we know that bringing healthcare professionals to our regions is urgent business. As a senator for South Australia, as I travel around our state, I have heard countless times about the difficulties South Australians living in our regions and our remote and rural areas have in accessing adequate healthcare services, quality healthcare services and, importantly, continuity of care in the services that they do access.

We know that the provision of healthcare services in our regions is simply not up to scratch. Over the past few years, since I've been elected, we've seen things like the repeated cancellation of obstetric services in Ceduna. It's happening over and over again, leaving women and their families with huge distances to travel to give birth. They are travelling far away from their families and their support networks at an already stressful period in their lives. We see it in the provision of completely substandard health facilities in rural and regional South Australia in towns like Ceduna, where, thankfully, this government, the Labor government, in partnership with our state Labor government, is finally rebuilding the local health clinic, Yadu Health, something I have been campaigning on for years in this place. The situation that we had in Ceduna was completely substandard, and the previous government refused to act.

We know that in communities there are people who are travelling incredibly long distances to see their GPs and who have suffered from a lack of timely access to quality health care and, of course, from a lack of continuity of care from their healthcare providers. We know that, especially when it comes to managing chronic disease and complex conditions, a trusted relationship matters. Continuity of care matters. In towns like Murray Bridge, a town that can be disadvantaged at times by its proximity to Adelaide—you can be close enough to miss out on some good services because it's assumed that it's easy enough to get to Adelaide—these types of measures will really matter.

Our healthcare systems have been under strain. They need help, and I'm proud to be a part of a government that is not afraid of doing the hard work to tackle these challenges. Whilst I appreciate that this bill is primarily relating to higher education, I wanted to note and draw out the measures within this bill which go to having an impact on the workforce of doctors and nurses in our regions. This is a critical issue in which I think we have, over many, many years, seen repeated failures which have left people in my state very disadvantaged. Any measure that we can take as a government and as a parliament which will mean we have access to better services and continuity of care—with more professionals out in our regions and our rural and remote areas, making a difference to their local communities and providing that continuity of care and those services locally in a way which is accessible and which allows people to stay closer to their families, closer to their support networks and, of course, closer to their employment—is a really positive thing.

So I commend those measures in the bill and look forward to continuing to work amidst this government's broader work and efforts on strengthening Medicare and strengthening our healthcare system, because we know that, after nine years of the previous government, it has never been in worse shape. So there is a lot of work to do, and I commend the measures in this bill which will, hopefully, make a difference in regional South Australia.