Page 3512 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 18 August 2010
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It is not about trying to disadvantage one group over another. Existing GPs can apply for access to this $15 million. I know that the universities, both the ANU and the University of Canberra, have a health role—at UCan there is the allied health and the nursing role and at ANU there is the medical school—and there are some very nice synergies with having the university linked to the idea of a GP superclinic.
I note that the Health Care Consumers Association are also very positive about the idea of health care in the suburbs with a multidisciplinary team with access to general practice and to allied health professionals as well. I think it shows that the federal government have listened to the ACT when we have continuously and continually written to them and lobbied them over extra support for general practice in the ACT.
I think the views by the Liberal Party are somewhat surprising, considering they campaigned pretty heavily on the idea of a GP superclinic during the last ACT campaign. In fact, they were going to offer a bulk-billing GP clinic—
Mr Seselja: An after-hours clinic.
MS GALLAGHER: After-hours GP clinics, bulk-billing—all the things that they were not able to deliver on, and would not have been able to deliver on. Not even the federal government can actually require general practitioners to bulk-bill. It is an individual practitioner’s decision. But apart from that little problem with their whole policy, their policy is very similar to the infrastructure proposed in this policy, except they do not like it now.
As we have seen with the job cuts, and indeed their views around building the education revolution, not standing up for Canberra and rejecting $15 million worth of vital health infrastructure just because it suits a political point at this point in time, they come into this place and consistently criticise the government about lack of support for GPs. Here we get a $15 million gift from the federal government and what do the Liberal Party say? “Oh no, that’s not needed; it’ll jeopardise existing general practice.” What a load of rubbish! How can any member of this place say no to $15 million worth of health infrastructure? Regardless of what position you sit in, how can you say no to it?
MR SPEAKER: Mr Hargreaves.
MR HARGREAVES: Minister, does this current position represent a double backflip with pike with a degree of difficulty of 4.0? And how does this million dollar investment by the federal ALP complement and fit in with the ACT government’s investment in health services in the territory?
MS GALLAGHER: I thank Mr Hargreaves for his supplementary. The GP superclinic alone, as I have said a number of times, will not solve the GP workforce problem but it is part of a broader range of measures. If you look at some of the initiatives that we have introduced here, aside from our advertising campaign to attract GPs, we have funded scholarships at the ANU Medical School. We are now paying GPs to train medical students, which has not happened in the past. We have an
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