House debates

Wednesday, 26 February 2020

Constituency Statements

Page Electorate: Australia Day Awards

10:36 am

Photo of Joel FitzgibbonJoel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Resources) Share this | Hansard source

Facilitating access to affordable health care should be amongst the highest priorities of any government. A government which fails to provide access to affordable health care risks having blood on its hands. Too many people in parts of my electorate are struggling to gain that access now. In a short period of time, more than a thousand people have signed my online petition calling upon the Morrison-McCormack government to revisit changes it has made to general practice and Medicare services. Large areas in the Hunter electorate will suffer under the new system for determining where bulk-billing incentives apply and where overseas trained doctors can work. Towns in both the Cessnock and Lake Macquarie LGAs have been adversely affected: Cessnock, Kurri Kurri, Morisset, Wangi Wangi, Cooranbong, Dora Creek, and Bonnels Bay, just to name a few.

Community Healthcare and Waratah Medical Services are two great practices which extensively offer bulk-billing services. They are now of course under pressure. Their economic model has changed because of the government's decision. It is true that some people will now decide not to visit a GP when they genuinely need to visit a GP, because they simply can't afford to do so because the bulk-billing services they've become accustomed to will no longer be available.

Some of these practices have ageing GPs, as well—Waratah Medical Services GP clinic in Morisset is a typical example. They had been unable to find new doctors anyway, and that has been compounded by the changes in this modified Monash model, which rates towns in my electorate on the same scale as Mosman on Sydney's north shore. This is crazy. Waratah medical services and those providing similar services in the Cessnock LGA can't afford to provide those quality health services at cheap rates without the support of this government. So I again call upon the government to revisit this issue to ensure that the boundaries for determining these things reflect the reality on the ground and therefore ensure that the people in my electorate, particularly in working-class and ageing communities, have access to medical services they need and deserve.

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