Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

I stand to note that the coalition will be supporting this particular piece of legislation, the Health Legislation Amendment (Removal of Requirement for a Collaborative Arrangement) Bill 2024. This comes at a very critical time for our healthcare system because it's under such extraordinary pressure. It has never been harder or more expensive to see a GP in Australia, bulk-billing is collapsing and ramping has reached record levels at emergency departments across the country. We believe that this is necessary, but the Albanese government desperately needs to listen to Australia. It needs to understand the magnitude of the challenges that are before us, particularly when it comes to workforce because the budget on Tuesday night almost single-handedly ignored workforce.

As I said, the coalition will not stand in the way of this legislation. We will support it because it removes a barrier to Australians accessing primary care. But we would also like to put on the record that we believe that there is an absolute necessity for us to address, with a greater level of urgency, the issues around workforce. That's why the coalition will be moving an amendment that calls on the government to work with the states and territories to ensure nurse practitioners and midwives can work to their full scope of practice and to reduce any restrictions on their scope of practice at the state and territory level.