Tuesday, 25 August 2026

 Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (22:10): (2722) My adjournment matter for the Minister for Health concerns the shocking state of rural and regional health care. A Herald Sun investigation published last weekend asked 142 doctors across regional Australia about the greatest problem facing their communities. Thirty-two were Victorians, including 10 in western Victoria. The message was simple and unequivocal: country patients are waiting too long, travelling too far and in some cases suffering permanent harm. Eleven of the Victorian doctors named attracting or retaining doctors as their greatest challenge. Another 10 nominated access to specialists or doctors generally. So two-thirds identified the same fundamental failure – not politicians, but clinicians working in the field, directly quoted and with their names and towns included.

The consequences are significant. In Portland Dr Bradley Borges reports that a child can wait almost 2½ years to have their tonsils removed, with no ENT specialist between Portland and Ballarat. In Casterton Dr Loretto Maxwell says the visiting radiology service simply stopped. In Birregurra Dr Jared Kilday has endured 18 months of failed recruitment and had to shrink the area from which his practice accepts patients. There is simply no excuse for this. Labor might try to blame Medicare, but public hospitals, specialist clinics, elective surgery, public imaging, ambulance and public psychiatry are state responsibilities. Worse, these services have been actively squeezed. In 2024 Labor tried to collapse 76 health services into 12 networks, while small rural services were directed to find savings of up to 10 per cent a year for three years. Labor retreated on forced amalgamations only after a community revolt, but that retreat did not restore a single service. The minister responded to these doctors with a statewide staffing headline and a political attack. A press release number does not deliver anything for my electorate – not an ENT specialist to Portland or a radiologist to Casterton.

The action I seek is for the minister to meet the 10 doctors from western Victoria and publish a response to the service failure each has identified, including firm actions and timelines to improve recruitment, restore lost services and reduce the waits and travel imposed on country patients. As I have said before, failing services create a vicious circle in regional communities. Without doctors, young families will not come. Without families, schools and businesses cannot find staff and the town slowly declines. Regional health care is therefore vital for not only individual patients but the survival of the whole community.