Regional Health Services

The Hon. C. BONAROS (15:19): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Health and Wellbeing a question about regional health.

Leave granted.

The Hon. C. BONAROS: A couple of days ago, I had the great pleasure of meeting the hardworking and dedicated chair of the Streaky Bay and Districts Medical Clinic Association, a wonderful community-based organisation established last year in a desperate attempt to keep open the medical clinic in the picturesque township on South Australia's West Coast. Over the past 14 months, the association has, as I understand, written to the minister twice, pleading for government funds to help keep open the doors of the town's only medical clinic.

Currently, the local community, via local council loans, has spent $300,000 to ensure that that happens, but the money is running out and the clinic is in a position where it is likely to shut its doors before the end of the calendar year. Not only will patients be forced to Ceduna, Wudinna, Elliston or Port Lincoln for medical services, 110 kilometres away—Ceduna being the closest—but there are issues obviously in those areas as well in terms of lack of GP services. It is estimated that there are currently 30 towns in the broader West Coast-Eyre Peninsula region without a GP. My questions to the minister are:

1. Given the dire nature of the situation, why hasn't there been any formal response to the Streaky Bay and Districts Medical Clinic Association, despite their desperate pleas for funding?

2. Do you think it's fair that people are disadvantaged against receiving basic medical services purely based on the region or area in which they live?

3. Will the government now step in and guarantee emergency funding to ensure that the clinic is able to remain open beyond 31 December this year?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (15:21): I will need to check the record but the honourable member's question implies that I haven't engaged with the Streaky Bay clinic. My recollection is that not only have I visited the clinic and met with both local representatives and members of the committee on Eyre Peninsula at Streaky Bay but that I have also met them in Adelaide.

I think it was only in the last sitting week that I reiterated again our concern about the rural health workforce and particularly the consultation that is underway currently in relation to the rural medical workforce. It has been only in the last months that I have met with both the federal Minister for Health and the federal minister for rural health and in both contexts the issues in relation to Eyre Peninsula were discussed.

The federal government was very generous recently in providing $300,000 for a new community initiative in the region to develop health services, which I understand Streaky Bay is part of. I think that group is called the Northern Eyre Peninsula Health Alliance. It doesn't just deal with medical practitioners; in fact, one of the key people involved in that process is a dental practitioner. However, the leadership on the Eyre Peninsula, both in the local government sense and in a health sense, are actively engaging both the commonwealth and state government and a range of bodies, such as the Rural Doctors Workforce Agency and the universities, to do what we can to address these significant problems.

One of the early initiatives of the government was to deliver on its commitment to double the number of medical interns in country South Australia, and that was achieved by five interns being based in Whyalla but working across Eyre Peninsula. We will continue to work with towns such as Streaky Bay. We appreciate that every South Australian should have fair access to adequate medical services, and we continue to be concerned about the sites without general practitioners. That is the whole reason why this government committed to and is delivering a Rural Health Workforce Strategy.