Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in this debate on the very significant report by the Standing Committee on Community Affairs, Highway to health: better access for rural, regional and remote patients. It is the government response to that report that we are looking at today. This report was the very dedicated work of the committee looking into all aspects of access to health services for people in rural, regional and remote areas. I remember the committee came to Townsville and took evidence at James Cook University, hearing about some of the good work being done by the university in particular on providing access to rural and regional patients.

When they gave evidence to the committee I met a number of students whom I had previously come across at a little place called Laura up in Cape York, where there was a Laura festival of Indigenous dance. This group of about 20 or 30 young people doing medical studies at James Cook University were out there interacting with Indigenous people and learning something of their customs, how they operate and how people live in those very remote parts of Australia. They were learning that as part of their tuition at James Cook University to become medical practitioners and allied health professionals. If I sound proud of the work that James Cook University does, that is because I am, not just because I am a North Queenslander and I think that things that happen in the north are tremendous but because the students at James Cook University and the James Cook University courses are particularly directed towards the provision of health services to rural and regional and remote Australia.

As I have often said in this chamber, the northern and remote parts of Australia provide a significant proportion of the nation’s wealth. Depending on which figure you use, up to 45 per cent of Australia’s export earnings come from Northern Australia, most of which is fairly remote. If it does not come from Northern Australia, in many instances it comes from places we would class as remote Australia. And yet those people—less than five per cent of the population live north of the Tropic of Capricorn—have very poor access to health services. This is particularly so under the combined maladministration of the Queensland state Labor government, the Northern Territory Labor government and the then Western Australian state Labor government. It has changed slightly in Western Australia in the last year or so as the new government started to pay more attention to the needs and to equity for those people who live in remote Australia.

The rural doctors who were recently here in Canberra attending a function in the Mural Hall indicated that, according to their studies, people in regional, rural and remote Australia were being underfunded to the extent of $1 billion annually for health services. That figure has been assessed by the rural doctors in a very clinical way and in a very economically sound way as well. But it is fact that people who live in rural, regional and remote Australia are underfunded to the extent of $1 billion when it comes to the provision of health services.

Regrettably, for all Mr Rudd’s blah, blah on health services, nowhere has he even recognised this underspend of money on our fellow Australians who happen to live in these more remote and regional parts of Australia. Indeed, Mr Rudd’s health plan will have an even worse impact on people in rural and regional Australia. There is precious little detail in Mr Rudd’s proposal, so it is a bit dangerous for us to talk about it. It is like everything Mr Rudd does: all spin and no detail; all blah, blah, blah and no action. What we can glean from the media appearance and the photo opportunities that Mr Rudd and his health minister took in announcing this magnificent new program is that it seems to be case funded or procedure funded. People who understand the health system have worked out that smaller hospitals—those in country and remote Australia which do not do a lot of procedures—will be worse off financially. They are worse off now.

I do not want to be boring about this but I want to emphasise to senators who might be listening that there is a $1 billion underspend for people in rural and regional Australia currently. Mr Rudd’s plan will make that even worse. Why? Because no-one from the Labor Party has any interest in rural and regional Australia. No-one has any interest in remote Australia and precious little interest in Northern Australia. Have a look around this chamber. The Labor Party senators are nice guys and lovely people but they all come from city areas. They all have backgrounds in the unions or in Labor Party membership. They have got no idea what happens in the real world, particularly the real world out in remote Australia. They do not understand the things that people go through to get access to health services.

My Labor colleagues in the chamber could slip down the corner from where they live in one of the capital cities and see the best specialist going or demand to see a GP, a dentist or a physiotherapist at any time of the day or night. In many instances people in rural and regional Australia have to drive for five to eight hours just to see a GP. They can wait the one or two weeks until the flying doctor comes in but sometimes illnesses do not allow people to wait for a week or two until the flying doctor—who does a marvellous job, I might say—can get in.

This whole issue of access to health services in rural and regional Australia is a very significant one. The committee made some relevant recommendations. The response from the government that we are debating today is, as you would expect, fairly disappointing. There are a lot of words—a lot of blah, blah, blah—but very little action. A new government in this parliament will pay genuine respect to those who live in rural and remote areas and take up a lot of the issues that this committee reported on and which this government has basically dismissed—as is usual—with all of the platitudes, the motherhood statements, the blah, blah, and little action. Certainly the health plan that Mr Rudd announced with such fanfare a couple of days ago does nothing for access to health services in rural, regional and remote areas.

This is becoming a crisis of major proportions for Australia. Some people in Australia live in worse than Third World conditions because they cannot get access to health services. That is a disgraceful thing for a country as wealthy as Australia. I urge the government, in the remaining time they have in office, to seriously look at the issues and to seriously look at programs that might help provide fair and equitable access to health services rather than the sort of blah, blah we got from Mr Rudd earlier this week.