David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party, Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

It is my great pleasure to speak here today on the recent health budget announced by my colleague and mentor the Minister for Health. Overall, it is a fantastic budget for the health portfolio. There is over $10 billion worth of new initiatives in that budget, and they are delivering in spades. In my particular bailiwick there were some really important announcements in the rural health space. One of the mental health initiatives mentioned was a $9 million e-health initiative targeting improved access to psychiatrists, psychologists and general practitioners for remote, very remote and outer regional residents of Australia. That means, if you are seeing a psychiatrist or a psychologist, you can have access to your psychiatrist via the internet and it is paid for. Four of 10 visits have to be face to face, because we need to have that initial human-to-human contact, but this initiative will remove the major burden of travelling all over the country to get access to mental health support from a registered practitioner, either a psychologist or a psychiatrist.

There are so many other initiatives—you only have to look in the general health budget. Forty-six per cent of headspace centres are in regional Australia. That is a coalition initiative. There is ongoing funding for them. We have a lot of other initiatives in the mental health space for rural access using telehealth through the PHNs. Many of them are looking at commissioning more services, and our state colleagues have already got a significant amount of investment in telehealth access. In WA and in New South Wales there are networks where remote practitioners can log-in via video linkages or Skype equivalents and get specialist advice.

There are many other things that I would like to comment on. The member for Ballarat besmirched the coalition government's effort to reduce smoking. We are totally on the ball when it comes to reducing smoking.

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