Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 10 Hansard (24 September) . . Page.. 3624 ..

MS DUNDAS (continuing):

He says that two doctors have now stepped forward to offer their services under this new regime. I hope that number will increase because it will take more than just two. We not only need to encourage more doctors to become residents of the ACT and provide their services here, but we also need to look at how we can manage the workload of those of our current doctors whose books are closed, who are not taking new patients and who are having problems with bulk-billing. We have to address the concerns of the doctors who are here.

I want to draw attention to the measures for increasing funding for after-hours access to GPs, because we know illnesses and accidents rarely happen between 9 and 5, Monday to Friday. It is very important that after-hours access is improved. This is particularly important to working parents who are sometimes put in the unfortunate situation of having to weigh up the cost of taking time off work to take their child to a doctor with the cost of seeing their child get sicker.

That is not just a question about GP shortage: it is a question about work and family and the demands that we are putting on parents and families. They face having to weigh up the loss of resources and money, because they are not at work, with the care of their child, and that is a situation that nobody should have to face.

Regarding after-hours access and how it will help the GPs currently, I would ask the government to be a bit more receptive to other ideas about addressing health problems. When ideas and suggestions are put forward to government about different concepts and ideas regarding health care, the government unfortunately seems to take a very dismissive attitude.

I have put forward a number of ideas to the minister that appear to have been dismissed out of hand without investigation, specifically an online doctors' website, which is an idea that has been implemented already in Victoria. It is running quite successfully in Victoria. Doctors can allow their patients to access them online.

This only applies to patients that the doctors have already seen and for whom the doctors already have a case history, and is only for minor ailments. However, it does free some of these doctors to deal with these cases simply, as opposed to doing sit-down consultations. It also means that people are not waiting in doctors' surgeries for what they know will be simple processes.

Maybe the idea will not work in the ACT and maybe it will but, instead of having the debate about it and investigate it, the minister just dismissed it. I think, if we are going to work as an Assembly and work as a democratic community, and try to come together to resolve the issues of our health care system, we need to be working together.

I do share the concerns raised in this motion and raised in debate today that the Commonwealth's offer simply was not good enough, and that the states and territories were effectively held to ransom over health funding. It meant the ACT and the other states and territory had to accept a second-rate deal which seems designed to weaken the public health sector. As it has demonstrated with its proposed changes to Medicare, the federal government seems determined to take us down the path of a user-pays health

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .