HANSARD EXTRACT
|
Private Members' Business: Health Care |
| 4 September 2006 |
Mr HAYES
(Werriwa) (4.15 p.m.)—I
congratulate the member for Hindmarsh for bringing this motion to
the attention of the House. I could not agree more with his
sentiments—perhaps taking a slightly different view than the member
for Gwydir on this subject. Electorates like my own are currently
paying the price for the cuts to doctor training that were
introduced in 1996, the year that this government took office.
Werriwa currently has a ratio of population to full-time equivalent
GPs of 1,700 to one—that is, 1,700 people for every full-time
equivalent GP. This is in contrast to the Department of Health and
Ageing recommended acceptable levels: a ratio of around 1,200 to
one.
Recently, the shadow minister for health,
Julia
Gillard, visited my electorate with me at Carnes Hill. We were
presented with a petition from over 1,000 residents from that one
suburb calling for more doctor training. Since that time, I have
been receiving many petitions in my office dealing with the same
subject. I would like to take the opportunity to thank Graham Conroy
for his efforts in collecting those signatures. As a resident of
that area and someone who is particularly concerned about the state
of health and the provision of GPs—like the concerns of many other
people in Carnes Hill—he has made it his task to go out and have
this discussion within his suburb.
Constituents in my electorate are paying the
price of GP training places that were reduced to 400 when this
government took office—and it put that in as a first-order priority
after the 1996 election. Nearly half the households in my
electorate—and, I assume, in many other growing and younger
electorates—contain couples and dependent children. These families
are now concerned that they will not have access to medical care
when they need it and when their kids need it.
What is worse, the cuts to the health programs
keep coming under this government. In the last budget alone, the
government decided that that it would slash the More Doctors for
Outer Metropolitan Areas program by $1.5 million. This program has
already assisted two doctors relocating to my electorate of Werriwa.
But, instead of using it to encourage more doctors to relocate to
the outer metropolitan areas of
Sydney, this government has decided to cut the program. It is clear
that health simply is not the priority of the
Howard government.
This government will say that the problems it
faces in health care are all the fault of state governments. The
member for Gwydir is no different. That is precisely what he was
trying to argue in his contribution to this debate. The blame game
is not what the residents of my electorate want to hear. They want
to know that, when they need it, they will have access to health
care and that their family will have access to proper health care
when it is needed. They want to know that, when they are sick or
when their kids are sick, there will be someone available to help
them.
I welcome the fact that the
University of Western Sydney will have its medical school up and
running very shortly and will be training students in the outer
metropolitan areas of Sydney. I am confident that the school will
produce excellent doctors, as the staff who are involved with the
school—people like Professor Neville Yeomans, the head of the
school, and Dr Andrew McDonald, the assistant professor, who is also
head of paediatrics at Campbelltown Hospital—are highly dedicated
and will work hard to produce their best efforts when producing
doctors for our area, for outer metropolitan Sydney. But they know
that this will not resolve our immediate problem. They will not be
able to produce doctors for a number of years. Add to that the fact
that a recent survey from the medical profession reports that many
GPs are saying now that doctors should specialise rather than go
into general practice, and that obviously paints a very grim picture
for health care provided by our system.
The government boasts that it is spending
record amounts on health, yet the budget document says otherwise. It
is cutting the PBS. It will only fund bulk-billing initiatives for a
further two years. It is wasting money on advertising to prop up
private health insurers, and additional funding for medical research
that is promised now appears in the budget to be conditional on the
sale of Medibank Private. What is worse for people in my electorate
is cutting the More Doctors for Outer Metropolitan Areas program.
This is a disgrace, and it reflects the attitude that is being
exhibited by this government.
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