Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

As I was saying, there has been a serious shortage of health care in rural and regional Australia for at least 10 years. One of the reasons for that has been severe workforce shortages—workforce shortages that this government is working on and acting on. In the short time that we've been in office, the Albanese government has increased regional visas from 11,200 to 34,000 this financial year. Those who attended the Jobs and Skills Summit, which of course doesn't include any member of the Liberal Party but does include the Leader of the National Party, Mr Littleproud, would have seen that this government is committed to increasing the regional migration intake to 34,000 just for this financial year. It is our full intention to deliver these visas, which will go some way to assisting with the regional workforce shortages that Senator Ruston asks about. But, indeed, the regional workforce shortages that we see across every industry in regional Australia are yet another legacy of the poor planning and mismanagement of the former government. If there's one example in this space that really exemplifies those failures, let's not forget that the former government left a visa backlog of one million visas. That's one million people waiting for visas to be processed. We've got it down to 600,000, and we're going to go further. (Time expired)