General Practitioner Incentives

Mrs HURN (Schubert) (14:47): My question is again to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Does the minister agree with comments made by Dr Rebecca Loveridge, who is the Chair of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners GPs in Training? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mrs HURN: In The Advertiser yesterday, on 5 February, Dr Loveridge reflected on the Victorian government's GP incentive scheme. She observed that many young doctors are now opting to stay in the hospital system because they face a $30,000 drop in pay and loss of benefits, including parental leave, if they leave to commence GP training. She then went on to say 'GPs in training should have the same pay and leave entitlements as their hospital-based equivalents'.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:47): That is exactly the point that I was raising in terms of what we are undertaking in terms of the single employer model, and perhaps I didn't explain that well enough.

What this enables somebody coming out of medical school to do is to sign up for an arrangement—in the Riverland at the moment it is a five-year contract for their training—and then they work for SA Health under an arrangement where they are paid the same as somebody who would be undertaking that training in a metropolitan hospital. They will be working in a regional area, and then they will be able to access leave arrangements, access maternity leave arrangements, access long service leave arrangements, and undertake work not only in our public hospitals and regional areas but also in primary care as well, and a pathway to having those qualifications in general practice.

This is why when both the shadow minister and I had a big meeting recently with general practitioners from across the state looking at general practice issues, this was one of the things that was listed as a key priority by those general practitioners that we met with. It is rolling out this program, which we can already see is delivering results. We are very happy to examine any other programs around the country to see if there are results stemming from those, but we can see already that there are results stemming from this work that is undertaken here in South Australia. We want to maximise that and make sure that we get the full benefit of that for this state.