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

My question is to the Minister for Health and Ageing. The rural doctor shortage crisis is devastating for Calare residents. Country people have shorter life expectancies than city people. It's outrageous. The Charles Sturt University's School of Rural Medicine opened five years ago to train doctors in the bush for practice in the bush with 37 Commonwealth supported students. It hasn't been given any more student places since. When will your government take effective action to (a) fix the rural doctor shortage crisis, and (b) give Charles Sturt University more Commonwealth supported medical student places?

Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you to the member for Calare. Congratulations on your re-election. Thank you to you and your team for our engagement over the last period of time on what you describe—the really significant challenge of access to doctors in rural Australia. Thank you for the roundtable of GPs you organised in your community that we conducted together just before the election.

I've said, from the time I was appointed to this portfolio, it has never been harder to find a GP in Australia than it has been over the last several years, and it's even harder again in the bush. I know that. As our population has been getting larger, older and, in many ways, sicker, we haven't kept up with the number of GPs anywhere in the country, but particularly in the bush.

As the member knows, there is no simple fix for this challenge, which is why we are trying to work right across a range of areas to improve access and also affordability. As he said, we've got to train more young people as doctors in rural communities. We know that, if they train in the bush, they're far more likely to stay in the bush, which is why we have added CSPs, Commonwealth supported places, into rural Australia and why we've committed to, in time, 200 more medical school places, which will be run through the education portfolio in partnership with the health portfolio. In due course, we'll be making it clear how we'll put those out for tender.

We've also done a range of other things to train more not just medical students but post-medical school graduates in general practice. We've got more GPs in training this year than ever before in this country. We want to expand that again, and that includes more in the bush as well. We want to reward doctors who work in the bush, which is why, in our first budget, some time ago, we increased incentives for GPs working in the bush, particularly if they had additional skills in areas like emergency management, obstetrics, mental health and the like. The bulk-billing incentives that apply through our bulk-billing reforms are higher in the bush than they are in the cities, which is why, of the additional bulk-billed visits since we put those plans into place, they have disproportionately benefited the bush. And the Minister for Education introduced very significant student debt relief provisions for medical graduates if they agree to go and work in the bush.

We know we're not going to be able to train enough Australians quickly enough to deal with the challenges that you have been talking about so strongly, Member for Calare, which is why we're also trying to cut red tape and cut costs for overseas trained doctors in countries where we have a high level of confidence, like the UK, New Zealand and Ireland, to come into Australia particularly to practice in the bush. In the last 12 months there has been a 500 per cent increase in the number of GPs from those three countries applying to come here and work in communities like yours.