Tammy Tyrrell (Tasmania, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

From 2022 to 2023, Australian livestock and livestock products brought in over $32 billion. From King Island to Cairns, that's a lot of pork on your fork or steak on your plate. Seriously, though, that's a decent budget to work from. But it's not just the money that I think about; it's about the people behind this. We often forget the sheer number of legends we have to thank. On a good day, we remember to thank the farmers, the processors and the buyers. But when was the last time we thanked our veterinarians?

I met with the Australian Veterinary Association last week, where we discussed key issues experienced by the vet workforce in Australia, as well as how to best go about training my groodle, Wilbur—we're still working on that one, though. But the point we kept circling back to was clear: vets are a key part of our communities. They are crucial to animal welfare and serve as our first line of defence against biosecurity risks and outbreaks. In the event of one of these outbreaks, a well-prepared, readily available vet workforce is needed to provide support, ensure animal welfare and contain the outbreak.

This robust workforce is not something that we have. In fact, the veterinary workforce has been suffering shortages for the past eight years. That's eight years of compromising animal welfare, eight years of mental health effects and burnout for vets, eight years of leaving ourselves underprotected against biosecurity risks, and eight years of public health vulnerability. Rural and regional areas have suffered the most from the eight-year vet workforce drought—rural and regional areas such as Tasmania.

This causes multiple issues, all of which are of great concern to me and to the association I met with. Firstly, animal welfare is compromised due to a shortage of vets who can maintain animal health and address issues. As a pet owner and a former farm worker, this does distress me. I'm sure those of you with pets, farms or a weird and wonderful wildlife menagerie in your backyard would echo my concern. In the case of a biosecurity outbreak, though, whether accidental or caused by a breach, we are leaving ourselves, our farmers and our animals without effective protection, treatment and humane control of outbreaks.

Being from Tasmania, I'm acutely aware of how precious a strong biosecurity bubble is, but one rogue mosquito carrying a devastating virus could risk it all, and our vets are the frontline that is currently short on soldiers. If this doesn't convince you that something needs to be done, consider this: over 60 per cent of existing human diseases originate from animals. So, if not for our farmers or our pets, we still have vets to thank for the early detection and treatment of animal diseases which are at risk of infecting you and me.

So what can we do to support our veterinarians? I'll tell you what we can do. We should introduce a rural practices HECS debt forgiveness scheme to encourage graduate veterinarians to relocate and to work in rural and regional areas, modelled off what is already provided to rural GPs and nurse practitioners. Research from existing rural practices HECS debt forgiveness schemes shows that these schemes are most effective in retaining graduates who have already had experience in rural areas. To ease the transition into rural practice, we should extend the Commonwealth prac payment scheme to vet students. This will help support these students throughout their 52 weeks of prac placement, while encouraging them to have a go in rural areas. These techniques will help address the shortage of veterinarians across the country by prioritising vets for tomorrow.

As for what we can do for our existing workforce, poor mental health is prominent in the vet workforce. To support them, we should invest in industry suitable mental health support programs, such as mental health first aid and the expansion of counselling and mentoring programs. Veterinarians are our lifeline in many ways. They are the first ones we call when our pets are injured, our farm animals are unwell or our biosecurity is compromised. We rely on them, and they come through for us despite severe underfunding and a thinly stretched workforce. It's time we give our vets a hand and ensure a sustainable, thriving workforce for the future.