General Practitioner Incentives

Mrs HURN (Schubert) (14:49): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Does the minister have any plans to address the concerns raised by Dr Loveridge? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mrs HURN: In The Advertiser again on 5 February Dr Loveridge was quoted in the story about workforce incentives in Victoria saying, and I quote, 'South Australia is absolutely at risk of a brain drain across the border' if we don't apply these types of incentives.

The SPEAKER: Tremendous newspaper, The Advertiser.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:49): Thank you. Quoted three times in three questions.

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: We read it often.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: That's right: we read it on this side of the house. It's good to know the shadow minister reads it. Not everybody on that side does read it. I reiterate the comments that we want to invest in terms of evidence-based programs that can make sure that we can address the issues that we face. Obviously, our primary area of responsibility is as per every state in relation to public hospitals and ambulance services, the federal government have a primary responsibility in terms of general practice and also in terms of aged care, and we are working collaboratively with the federal government in terms of their investments in Medicare.

We are also working collaboratively with the federal government in terms of addressing the barriers in terms of recruitment of staff into Australia. This is a big issue that we face right across the country, where we are in a globally competitive environment and where we are competing, particularly at the moment—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —for people from the UK. You can see that those doctors do want to come here but they face extended waits in terms of the processes involved in immigration, the processes involved in the medical board, and the processes involved in the colleges compared with countries like Canada and New Zealand that have taken action in recent years to streamline those processes to make it a lot quicker for people particularly from low-risk countries to gain their accreditation immigration status to be able to work here.

A recent example of that is that we have been successful in attracting a GP to Wudinna recently, which obviously is in one of the more tricky areas, and I am sure the local member is very appreciative that that has occurred. The doctor who came to Australia from the UK faced a year's wait in terms of being able to do that. That doctor, in fact, mentioned how he had seen campaigns being undertaken in the UK at the time, but the steps involved through all those processes were very lengthy compared with other countries. Thank you to him for persevering through that process.

The good news is that we have undertaken a lot of work with all the other states and the federal government. There has been a review by the former New South Wales health secretary Robyn Kruk into all the processes from end to end in terms of recruitment of overseas health practitioners, particularly doctors and particularly from lower-risk countries like the UK. At the recent national cabinet meeting that the Premier attended, there was an agreement in terms of the implementation of this to make sure that we can get those processes fixed to make sure that we can recruit as fast as we possibly can.

The other end of the coin as well though is in relation to how we can get more Australian doctors through medical school. A lot of people don't know that the number of doctors who go through medical school is capped by the federal government. While we are seeing increasing numbers of doctors needed in our public hospitals, and we are certainly hiring more doctors, and every other state is hiring more doctors to work in our public hospitals, we need the number of doctors coming through medical school to increase to make sure that we can meet that demand and also to make sure that we can address the fact that many doctors now are wanting to work part time compared with the doctors of previous years. So for the same number of headcount we are getting less FTE.

That's why another thing South Australia has been advocating to the federal government is increasing those medical places so we can increase the supply of South Australian and Australian students.