Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This Saturday, 9 September, the inaugural Pacific Island Women's Health Equity Day will be held in my electorate. The event will be a day aligned with the United Nations sustainable development goal of gender equality. Led by Engaging Pasefika, a Pacific Island led community organisation, it will be a day that brings health stakeholders together with community members to increase healthcare access, inclusion and navigation. Engaging Pasefika Incorporated was born out of the invisibility of Pacific voices in healthcare spaces and the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 in our communities living in the northern suburbs of Melbourne. Its mission is to advance Pacific health equity by leading community initiatives that validate the community's health experience and family systems grounded in the values of family, service, dignity and intersectionality.

Engaging Pasefika believes in active awareness raising, and this includes the phrase that there is no equity without data equity. It is hard to invest in community where data is not officially collected to reflect a collective experience. We know that bringing communities together in culturally appropriate ways inspires confidence and generates engagement in civil and social participation. The burden for too long for many of our locally diverse communities has rested on communities to adapt to a health system that does not embrace their cultural, linguistic and social identities. Instead, Engaging Pasefika is calling for a system that is resilient, intersectional and compassionate of the evolving needs of the community it serves. Engaging Pasefika advocates for representation in the health sector, investment in health outcomes and examining the social and commercial determinants of health and inclusion and the shedding of privilege in access and equity.

Our local Pacific Island Women's Health Equity Day on 9 September is about addressing health inequities and calling to connect across the differences that divide us. It is a day of purpose, of learning, of connecting and of what some might refer to a self-care, which our Pacific Island people are calling collective care. I want to congratulate and commend all Pacific Island women whose power and prayers sparked the courage to emerge with the organisation of the first Pacific Island Women's Health Equity Day in Victoria to honour Women's Health Week. I'd like to acknowledge the support of our local Pacific community, the Victorian government, VicHealth, Hume City Council and the many health practitioners attending on the day as well as local businesses who have provided their support. I'd also like to thank Anasina Gray-Barberio for her lead in this initiative. I have worked very closely over many years in my local community with the Pacific Island communities, and I'm impressed by their tireless commitment and dedication to delivering support to their community members.

On another local health matter, I want to speak about the ongoing crisis of GP shortages in my electorate. Firstly, let me say that I'm very proud of this government's historic investment in Medicare, which delivers the largest ever increase to bulk-billing incentives. I want to thank the Minister for Health and Aged Care in particular for championing this historic investment. The Tullamarine-Broadmeadows catchment, which takes in other suburbs across my electorate, is experiencing a severe GP shortage. Figures show that a true count of GPs in the catchment is 0.721 of a GP full-time equivalent per 1,000 residents, which is fewer than one GP for 1,000 residents. This crisis of the GP shortage is compounded by the workforce shortages, which have caused a supply-demand imbalance in our area.

I recently met with DPV Health Broadmeadows with regard to their application for an exceptional circumstances review of the Department of Health's distribution priority area classification. This comes within the context where from July 2021 to June 2023 there were a total of 8,707 potentially avoidable general practitioner-type presentations to Northern Health's emergency departments. This included patients from category 4, which are semi-urgent, and category 5, which are non-urgent. That means an additional 1,081 patients from Broadmeadows and surrounding suburbs, including 6,260 and 1,366 presentations from Craigieburn and Meadow Heights during this time period respectively. These disparities in health access and outcomes must be addressed because everyone deserves access to universal, prompt and world-class medical care. It's a sector where improvements must be made consistent view with changing realities.

House adjourned at 20:00