Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to support the report by the Standing Committee on Health and Ageing inquiring into registration processes and support for overseas trained doctors. I do so because it is of particular relevance to my electorate of Wannon. As a matter of fact, one of the best submissions which was presented to this inquiry came from the Western District Health Services. It goes to the nub of this issue, and that is that more and more in regional and rural areas we are relying on overseas trained specialists and GPs to support the provision of medical and surgical services.

There are two ways to address this problem and, hopefully, we can address the first by making sure that we get our Australian doctors trained more and more in regional and rural areas. There is no question that if we want to make sure that we have doctors for regional and rural areas, the best way we can do that is by training them out in regional and rural areas.

Deakin University have started that process in my electorate at their campus in Warrnambool, and they are doing an excellent job. We need to see more of that occurring across the country, because that should be the primary way we address this issue. I hope that it will be, and I hope that we will see a coalition policy which goes to the heart of this issue and continues what was started under the Howard government in this regard.

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