Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

and more expensive to see a doctor than it ever has been in the Medicare era. I'll go to the changes we made to the DPA, because in his question the member tried to compare the area he represents to Sydney. What we did with our changes to the DPA, the Distribution Priority Area, was to reverse a cut made by the former government in 2019 that removed the ability in 140 GP regions of this country to employ overseas trained doctors. They were not regions in the middle of Sydney. They were regions like the ones represented by the member for Hunter, the member for Shortland and the member for Paterson on the Central Coast, and like other regional areas in Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales. The former government pretended it was the same process to recruit a doctor in the Hunter Valley as it was in Mosman. It simply isn't. I visited, time after time, GP surgeries in regional Australia that had consulting rooms that were closed and consulting rooms without a doctor.

The Leader of the National Party might scoff. They tried to run a campaign in the Hunter Valley. They obviously didn't bother visiting any GP practices in the Hunter Valley, because doctor after doctor and patient after patient—

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