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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 6 Hansard (15 May) . . Page.. 1634 ..

MS MacDONALD: Mr Speaker, I have a supplementary question. Given that ACT patients needing radiation oncology services face long waits and that the territory is about 40 GPs short of national averages, can the minister say if other initiatives announced in last night's budget will help meet local needs?

MR STANHOPE: Once again, the two worrying and disquieting aspects of the federal budget, insofar as it dealt with issues of health and health funding, were the announcements made in relation to GPs and radiation oncology services. In relation to the significant additional funding to enhance GP services in areas where there are difficulties, the Commonwealth has explicitly excluded both the ACT and the Northern Territory from a share of those funds. That is in the face of the Commonwealth's last published figures on GP numbers in the Report on Government Services 2002 that show that the ACT is well below the national average of full-time equivalent GPs on a per capita basis. The estimation is that we are 40 GPs below the national average of full-time equivalent GPs.

So there is a significant acknowledged problem here in the ACT in relation to our capacity to attract GPs to service in the ACT. We are at least 40 short on a per capita basis, and yet the Commonwealth has specifically and explicitly excluded both the ACT and the Northern Territory from its GP enhancement or attraction programs. It is a real pity that Canberra is so blatantly discriminated against by the Commonwealth government in relation to that program.

Similarly, in relation to significant additional funding for radiation oncology, whilst the Treasurer's statement and the budget papers are much more ambiguous or ambivalent about the funding of radiation oncology services, there is a real concern that the ACT will miss out on that funding as well, to the extent that the Treasurer, in his description of where the services will be targeted, uses the description of "regions".

We know from previous budget policy initiatives that the ACT does not fit within the Commonwealth's description of a region, so we miss out at both ends. We miss out in relation to the GP funding because we are not one of the major state capitals, as described by the Treasurer in his speech last night, and we miss out on the radiation oncology funding because we are not a region. It appears that because we are Canberra, we are not a major capital or a metropolitan area, and we are not a region either.

To the extent that I always expect a level of Canberra bashing in these issues, it is a major concern that, in the case of one particular program, we are not a metropolitan area, so we miss out; there is another program targeted for the regions, and we are not a region so we miss out on that as well. This, of course, flies in the face of the fact that the Canberra Hospital, as the major trauma hospital for this region-and Canberra is the major medical centre for a region of just on 500,000-attracts 25 per cent of its patients from New South Wales.

In relation to high care procedures such as oncology, it attracts a much higher percentage. From memory, something of the order of 40 per cent of the people who access radiation oncology services at the Canberra Hospital are from New South Wales, and yet we are discriminated against in this way by the Commonwealth.

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