Regional GP Services

Mr HUGHES (Giles) (15:16): I rise today to talk about what I think is a very important issue across regional South Australia. It affects many of our electorates in regional South Australia, and the issue was highlighted again on Sunday in the Sunday Mail, where it identified that there were, as a result of a report, 60 vacancies for GPs in country South Australia. I know that in my own electorate the council in Kimba has been battling to get a GP for an extended period of time and, as part of that battle to get a GP, they have had to spend ratepayers' money. I think in the order of $150,000 has been spent by that small council on trying to attract a GP to the community.

I attended a meeting in Quorn that was looking at, succession planning, if you like. Quorn has been incredibly fortunate in having Dr Tony, as he is known locally. Dr Tony has been practising in that community since 1992, but he is not going to be there forever, and obviously the community is concerned about what they can do to find a replacement. Once again, we might well see a council having to adopt the role of seeing if they can attract a GP to the community of Quorn.

Streaky Bay in the seat of Flinders has recently lost its GP. I know that in order to secure that GP, that particular council has also had to expend a very significant amount of money. I think in the interests of fairness it should not come back to local councils and local ratepayers to undertake this work to try to address this deficit. When you look at it, 60 vacancies across the state, it clearly indicates that there is a systemic problem, but it should not be left to councils to do what they can, and what they can do to try to address this gap is often limited.

Twenty towns in South Australia have been identified as priority 1 when it comes to vulnerability regarding the lack of access to GP services where people might have to travel very extended distances in order to access a service. When I said that it is across all our electorates, the priority hotspots where GPs are needed are Wudinna, Kimba, Cummins, Lameroo, Pinnaroo, Streaky Bay, Beachport, Kingston, Robe, Port Augusta and others.

Health professionals were identified as being needed in Port Lincoln, Port Augusta and even in communities as big as Whyalla and Mount Gambier, Ceduna, Murray Bridge, the APY lands (where the turnover of medical staff is enormous), Hope Valley (a very distant and remote community), Yalata and Coober Pedy. In the interests of equity, this needs to be addressed. It is not primarily a state responsibility.

The state can play a role—and, I would argue, a far more proactive role—and pick up the burden that at the moment the local councils are shouldering. At the end of the day it is a federal issue, and a $500,000 package over the next 10 years was recently announced to address it. However, in looking at the report out of which those recommendations or that action came, it still does not address the systemic issues leading to the shortage of GPs in country South Australia and in other country areas in other states.

In order to address that, we really have to start looking at the Medicare provider numbers. The city, especially the more affluent parts of the city, are massively overserviced when it comes to GPs, and often where the real health needs are, out in country areas, they are very much underserviced. We need to provide Medicare service provider numbers on the basis of population ratios and stop paying people to deliver services where they are not needed but pay them to deliver services where they are needed.