Tom Venning (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on this Labor government's women's health package. The government boasts opening 11 new endometriosis and pelvic pain clinics. They brag that 33 clinics are now open nationwide. While those numbers look great here in Canberra, they mask a very clear divide. When it comes to real care, regional South Australia has been entirely left off the map. This government is happy to announce 11 new clinics, but do you know how many were allocated to South Australia—the minister's very own state? Zero, nada, nothing. There are only two endo clinics in South Australia: one in Adelaide and one in Kadina. The PHN for country SA has a population of nearly 500,000 people. That's 250,000 women, yet a single clinic is expected to service them all. Is a woman from Ceduna, Port Lincoln or Whyalla expected to drive up to seven hours to Kadina? Excluding regional South Australia from these new clinics shows that regional women are being forgotten.

I have a serious question to ask this Labor government: do we really have universal health care in this country? Tell that to a woman from Marree or a girl from Elliston. The reality is regional, rural and remote South Australians die younger than the metropolitan cousins. We have suicide rates higher than the rest of the state. The electorate of Grey has the highest rates of type 2 diabetes in the entire country. Councils are needing to cough up 50, 60 or 70 grands just to attract a GP to their communities. It is not good enough.

In this Labor government's very own statistics they show they only care about metropolitan Australians. For Medicare urgent care clinics, their task is to have four out of five Australians within a 20-minute drive. Again, that does not help regional South Australians. It services the metropolitan communities only. Driving hours to access basic services is wrong. The logistics are complex, especially from the Eyre Peninsula or up north.

When regional women face severe pain, infertility and chronic nausea, we tell them to drive hours to get help or we rely on transport schemes to send them to Adelaide instead of treating them locally. We used to be able to treat complex issues in regional hospitals but not any more. Per capita, SA Health spend more money in Adelaide than they do outside of Adelaide. Given the logistical difficulties of serving healthcare in the regions, this is unacceptable.

Endometriosis Australia points out that this disease affects one in seven women and that diagnosis can take up to seven years. Expanding access to outer regions is vital, or that wait time could get worse. Local medical staff feel the strain. Dr Anna Kearney from Kadina notes that receiving zero new clinics was 'a bad but not unexpected result'. She also highlights that local doctors can manage period pain but that the government gives them next to zero support to do so. This failure of support also extends to bulk-billing and urgent care clinics across our regions. My office is hearing that the online bulk-billing admin system is a total joke, with local fly-in doctors having to register multiple times only for the system to drop off without warning.

Allocated Medicare urgent clinics are also a key issue. Whyalla got one, and of course I welcome that, but Port Lincoln was somehow overlooked. The stats show that Port Lincoln was deserving of an urgent Medicare clinic. But, of course, the politics got in the way. Allocating one endometriosis and pelvic pain clinic per PHN is flawed when our network covers such an enormous part of the state. We must listen to patients. Deanna Flynn Wallis is an ambassador for Endometriosis Australia. She says the journey, medical gaslighting and the life impacts are exhausting. She says that South Australians need more clinics for our regional warriors. This lack of foresight extends across all regional health care, including vital maternal support.

The women of regional South Australia are tough, but they should not have to fight their own government just to get basic health care. They have carried the heavy burdens of distance and neglect. They work hard, they raise their families, and they build our communities. Regional women deserve the world. They deserve expert care right where they live. It is time this parliament stopped abandoning them. We must fund the clinics they need right now in the regions they proudly call home.

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