Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to take note of the question from Senator Ruston of Minister Gallagher. I hardly know where to start with this appalling Labor policy. As other colleagues have said, it is absolutely detrimental to the health care of Australia's most vulnerable in rural, regional and remote areas. It is even worse when you consider that the government admitted during estimates that they had done not a second of consultation with people who might be concerned. They've called a taskforce instead of actually going out and talking to the people of Western Australia, instead of going out into regional and remote communities to talk to them, these communities who are so starved of GP care.

For the DPA classification to now include outer metro areas is such a retrograde step for so many people in Western Australia. Let me tell you what Labor has done to Western Australia on health. We've got a health system in absolute crisis and chaos, we've got record ramping, we've got record code blacks, we've got our nurses in uproar and on strike and now, not only are we 350 young doctors short in our hospitals in Western Australia, we are over 100 GPs short, mostly in rural and remote communities. What does that mean? It means that Western Australians who are our most vulnerable, those in Indigenous communities and in other remote areas, who need health care the most cannot get the health care they need, and this will make it worse.

The minister, Minister Butler, couldn't even say today how many communities were impacted. Well, let me tell you: if we're 100 GPs short in Western Australia, the vast majority of them are in regional and remote areas. According to Western Australian doctors, that means that in every town that is without a GP or is underserviced by GPs there are 50 people a day who are not getting the support and the medical support they need—50 people a day per doctor for our most vulnerable. So, shame on Labor—again, policy on the run, without even consulting anyone.

Let me finish by providing some of the information that if Labor had come to Western Australia and gone out into regional Australia they would have found out. As I said, regional health is struggling by 100 doctors that we're missing and we cannot get, for about 50 patients a day. So, even areas that are closer to the city—take, for example, Toodyay—are concerned because they're competing with Margaret River, competing with the coast and now competing with outer suburbs of Perth. Shame on Labor.

Question agreed to.