Page 1320 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 25 March 2009
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MR DOSZPOT: I am sorry?
Ms Gallagher: It is just that I heard on the grapevine you were a bit nasty this morning.
MR DOSZPOT: Nasty to you? How could I be? I rise in support of Mr Hanson’s motion today. It is an important issue, perhaps one of the most important issues we as a community need to deal with but one which this government has manifestly failed to deal with in their nearly eight years in government.
Perhaps I have been more exposed than other members to the suffering that the community has been subject to as a result of the chronic shortage of GPs in the territory. I know, for instance, that the people of Calwell, in my electorate and my home suburb, have been left with no alternative but to rally together to try to set up a clinic ourselves due to the lack of interest by this government. Ms Gallagher, if you listen to what I am about to say, it might give you a little bit more of an insight as to why things will get a bit nasty.
At Calwell, our local GP closed in January 2007, with the practice at Richardson following in the middle of 2007. Monash also closed around this time, resulting in the loss of three GP clinics in the space of two years. The closure of the Wanniassa medical centre in 2008 was the final straw for the entire Tuggeranong community.
Ms Gallagher, you were conciliatory about all the attention and the urgency that you were paying to this GP issue. You have had the report of a bipartisan health committee, the Wanniassa report, before the government now for over five months. Where is that report? Mr Hanson has referred to it. We are waiting for a very crucial response from the government on the very fact that we are trying to debate at the moment, the issue with GPs.
Maybe if we suggest a statue of a mythical GP on the Monaro Highway we might get Mr Stanhope’s attention—a statue of a mythical GP that is rapidly disappearing from our community. Maybe that is one way that we can get you to pay attention to a fact that is of so much concern to our community. There it is; there is the challenge: put a statue of a mythical GP on the Monaro Highway, Jon.
I have personally been aware of the doctors4Tuggeranong project since well before my election to this place. In fact, along with Nick Tsoulias, a Calwell business proprietor who has been the primary mover behind this initiative and founder of this initiative, I attended a community meeting last week which highlighted the difficulties associated with getting a GP clinic up and running here in the ACT. Our initial meeting last week went a long way towards addressing some of the challenges.
But I see how difficult it is to attract GPs to the territory because it is so hard to set up a practice here. I see the impact of Katy Gallagher’s failure to convince her federal colleagues that the ACT has a GP shortage. I envy the people of neighbouring Queanbeyan who, courtesy of their swinging voter status, get their very own super clinic. I see how our community suffers when bigger corporate organisations come to
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