Andrew Gee (Calare, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Fowler for bringing this matter of public importance to this House today. The topic is 'the postcode lottery of accessing quality health care in Australia'. I can tell you that there is a fundamental unfairness and inequality in access to health services in this country. I'm from the Central West of New South Wales, and we are on the western side of the Great Dividing Range. We call that Great Dividing Range 'the sandstone curtain' because it divides city and country physically but it divides city and country in so many other ways as well. One of those ways it divides is in access to health services. The cold, hard truth of health care in this country is that the further away you live from a city, the shorter your life expectancy is. In fact, devastatingly, people who live in very remote areas die about 15 years earlier than their city cousins. It's a shocking statistic in this modern and prosperous Australia, but it is true.

Part of that is the rural doctor shortage crisis. The Salvation Army Social Justice Stocktake 2025 found that 40 per cent of people in the Calare electorate felt they had waited longer than acceptable for a GP appointment. It's weeks and months to see a GP across the Central West of New South Wales, and many GP practices have closed their books to patients so you can't get in to see a GP. The situation is absolutely dire. It's not just a rural doctor crisis. There is a shortage of providers across all healthcare professions, and it manifests itself in an increasing scarcity of all rural health services. Analysis by the National Rural Health Alliance shows that rural communities miss out on $8.3 billion in health funding every year, with underspending across hospitals, disability services, aged care and community health. It is a crisis which is having devastating impacts across regional New South Wales and, indeed, country Australia.

The rural doctor shortage crisis has been made much worse by changes this government has made to the distribution priority area system. Basically, the way the system worked was that, when overseas trained doctors wanted to come and work in Australia, they would have to work in a country area for up to 10 years. These country areas were known as distribution priority areas. But the current government has changed the boundaries. In July 2022 it all changed. For the first time, instead of country areas having priority for overseas trained doctors, basically the whole of the country—except for central business districts—was opened up to overseas trained doctors, so they didn't have to work in a rural or remote area. In city areas, you can get more money, you can see more patients and there's more support for you as a GP. So, of course, as soon as that was announced, there was a great movement of doctors from the country to the city. In terms of the way these boundaries changed, it means that areas such as Fairfield, Hornsby and Warringah and the outer suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne now have the same priority as country areas for overseas trained doctors.

If you look at the map of New South Wales, it's now basically one big distribution priority area, except for the inner suburbs of Sydney. Sydney does not have a doctor shortage. That's why I introduced the Doctors for the Bush Bill in the last parliament—to remedy this unfairness and to restore the priority that country areas should have. Unfortunately, when we put it to a vote, none of the major parties supported it. I count the so-called 'guardians of the bush', the National Party, in that, as they would not support the Doctors for the Bush Bill, despite my bill restoring the boundaries.

I would urge the government to look at distribution priority areas and get more Medicare urgent care clinics and Medicare mental health centres into the Central West and into the seat of Calare because, at the moment, we've only got one clinic, in Bathurst. (Time expired)

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