Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

One of the great privileges that I get in this job is to spend a lot of time in regional South Australia—a world-renowned tourist destination, a food bowl and a growing economic powerhouse. It is a place with the most incredible communities of people. It's also pretty unique in terms of its population distribution. South Australia has a very focused population in Adelaide and a much more spread-out population with much smaller numbers. We don't have the large regional towns that you see in other states—across the eastern seaboard, particularly. That means that our distribution of services can be somewhat challenged. It is difficult and requires alternative thinking and more innovative solutions to come up with the manner of how we provide the services that people deserve in regional South Australia and manage to deliver them.

One of the first things I did when I came to the Senate was work on the GP inquiry that was looking at access to GP and primary health services across regional and rural areas. Throughout that process, all I heard were innovative solutions that were coming up in various areas, in these towns where they could see how they could actually deliver. When we came to government shortly after that, we were determined to deal with the policy malaise and the neglect from those 10 years of the Liberal-National government, which had left some of those regional areas ignored.

So I am delighted to hear the announcement last week, between the Albanese and Malinauskas governments, of a single-employer model. This means that GPs who are training get to stay in those areas and build those relationships. They will be employed and they will have entitlements. This will make a fundamental difference to our regional areas and their access to health services.