GED KEARNEY, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGEING: Good morning everybody. It’s lovely to be here in Dobell with my colleagues the Member for Shortland Pat Conroy, and the local Member here Emma McBride, the Member for Dobell. We’re in a GP clinic that’s run by Dr Con. He’s here with his medical student, Assad, and thank you for having us.
The reason we’re here is because there is a critical shortage of general practitioners, of GPs, particularly in rural and regional areas. The Labor Party started an inquiry into why this is so and what is happening, why it’s happening, and what we can do to fix it. The Government has exacerbated a critical shortage of GPs by taking away a specific designation of rural areas where they can get overseas doctors, where they can have more medical students, where they can actually increase the general practitioner group really. And doctors like Con have a practice here that has seven rooms, seven consulting rooms, that are empty because he can’t get doctors.
Now we all know how important general practitioners are to communities. We all know that they are the bedrock of our health system. We all know that a good GP is worth their weight in gold, but if you can’t get into a GP, if you have to wait weeks, if they’ve closed their books so they’re not taking anymore patients, what do you do? You have to go to the local hospital and then you block up the ED and you have to wait for hours. That’s not the answer. And I am pleased to say today that Labor has an answer. The Labor Party will make sure that these areas like The Entrance can get access to general practitioners. To tell us more about that is the lovely Emma McBride.
EMMA MCBRIDE, MEMBER FOR DOBELL: Thank you Ged, and it’s so good to be here with my colleague and friend Pat Conroy, the Member for Shortland, and Ged who before this role was a nurse, and to be here with Con who like me was a pharmacist before he embarked on his career in general practice. When I was a young pharmacist starting out on the Central Coast, we had a critical shortage of GPs. Doctors’ books were closed. People who moved to the Central Coast couldn’t find a GP and were forced to travel back to where they lived before to be able to get the care they needed. Now, fast forward to 2022, it’s in crisis, and the Government has waited to the third year of a pandemic, until our health system is broken, to do anything.
But they haven’t gone far enough. They haven’t made the whole of the Central Coast a priority area, and that’s what Labor would do. Labor would make the whole of our region a priority area so that young people and families and older people in our community can get the healthcare they need close to home when they need it, and affordably. I’m really grateful to doctors like Con who choose to live and work in our community and bring their skills and expertise and healthcare to our community, and to students coming through at Newcastle University where we are training doctors for our community and communities like ours across Australia. I know for Pat this has been a real crisis in his community as well, including what the Government has done to GP After Hours Access. Because as Ged said, if we don’t have enough GPs, patients are forced to end up in after hours care like Bridges, or in the already stretched emergency departments at hospitals like Wyong.
I worked at Wyong Hospital for almost 10 years. Staff there are dedicated, they’re capable, and they care, but they are stretched, and this Government has created this problem. It is a problem of their own making, and our community are the ones who are left suffering because of their inaction and their inability to see the scale and the nature of this problem. I’ll now hand over to Pat to talk more about what this has meant in his community which has been really impacted by this crisis.
PAT CONROY, MEMBER FOR SHORTLAND: Thanks Emma, and I am so pleased to be part of today’s announcement that Labor will fix the GP crisis on the Central Coast. I have been bombarded by GPs and members of society about the impact that this crisis is having in their community. I’ve spoken in Parliament about practices in Lake Munmorah that have closed their books, that have lost their doctors, and can’t see patients. The Central Coast is a vibrant community. It’s a fast-growing community, and two of the key demographics in this community that are growing are young families and older Australians. And they’re the two groups that need to see a general practitioner more than anyone else, whether it’s a kid with an illness or an older Australian needing a health checkup.
So Labor’s announcement that we will solve the GP shortage crisis on the Central Coast is great for our entire community. And it’s really in stark contrast to this Government’s attack on the healthcare of all Australians but particularly on the Central Coast. If you think about it, they’ve made it harder to find a doctor by reducing the areas that can attract foreign-trained and bonded GPs, but if you do manage to find a practice that has their books open, you have to wait longer to see a GP, and when you get in, you will pay more to see a GP because of the abolition of the bulk-billing incentives that GPs used to be paid on top of the freeze of GPs pay for five years.
So under this Government, it’s harder to find a doctor, you’re going to wait longer to see the doctor if you find one, and then you’re going to pay more, and that needs to change. And that’s why Labor – that invented Medicare – is so committed to reversing these circumstances. I’m going to invite Dr Con to speak now. Dr Con has been a fierce advocate for fixing this GP shortage on the Central Coast. As Ged said, seven empty practice rooms in this practice alone. Con has been a fierce advocate for the health of all Central Coast residents, so I invite Dr Con to talk about what this announcement might mean for his surgery and for doctors around the Coast.
DR CON MAHOLFA, OCEANSIDE PRIVATE PRACTICE: Thank you for having me and thank you for coming. This is the greatest news that we’ve heard today, the announcement to be able to recruit GPs from overseas and bonded GPs. I’ve been here myself for 12 years and we’ve been trying to recruit GPs, but because of the rules that the Government put in place, we could not obtain any GPs at all. The current number of GPs that have been trained in Australia is not sufficient to meet the needs of our communities. As a result, we have [inaudible] all options on the table to be able to recruit GPs. So the announcement that was made today will enable us to have an option to hire new GPs to save the community so that when people are sick, they have access to health. We have a great population in the Central Coast. The elderly and the children, they carry a heavy burden of medical requirements, and as such we need more GPs on the Central Coast. So the announcement that was made today is the greatest news for the Central Coast, for the GPs and for the community. Thank you.
KEARNEY: Thanks very much Con. This literally is a lifesaving policy by the Labor Party, and we are very proud of it. Thanks very much everyone.