Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Tyrrell for the question, for her advocacy for her state of Tasmania and particularly for her focus on access to health care, because it is a serious issue. It's a serious issue right across the country, but we acknowledge that in Tasmania there are significant workforce shortages, and we need to be putting in place a whole range of responses to that, including training more psychologists. But that will take some time, and the Minister for Health and Aged Care has some measures focused on that to encourage more people in, particularly psychologists. There's certainly a shortage of psychologists here in the ACT, and I know that goes right across the country. There are issues around how we get more people into university to actually train to be psychologists. Then there's how we manage some particular programs and invest in the workforce in Tasmania in the short term.

I know we've been doing a lot of work with the Tasmanian government, looking particularly at how we can invest in the primary healthcare system in Tasmania, because that's under enormous pressure as well. We know that GPs do a lot of the mental health support at the moment. Because of shortages in those other areas, they have that responsibility. Often the first point of contact for people is to go to their GP to undertake, if they need it, a mental health plan. We're doing some work, which you are aware of, with the Tasmanian government in relation to the Primary Care Pilots to train general practice workforce. We're also looking at how we can support GP trainees. So there is a focus on the primary healthcare system at the start. But, yes, we acknowledge that there's a bigger issue on workforce right across the board, and that's going to take a longer time to fix. (Time expired)