Page 1622 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 1 April 2009
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been closures elsewhere. Was she not awake to the myriad of closures that have been occurring?
I believe she was actually on the committee that inquired into the closure of Wanniassa. Did she wait until there was a closure that directly affected the area of her constituents where she might be able to get some leverage electorally before deciding to make a point about it? We have Ms Porter, a backbencher in the government, reminding the government that there are closures. This is always a good thing, I suppose. Ms Gallagher has been saying recently, and indeed Ms Porter alluded to this, that, “All we can do is I guess seek the corporate good will of some of these providers.” Certainly, I commend the intent that we seek the corporate goodwill of providers and I share that concern. But certainly I do not share the sentiment that that is all we can do.
We are well aware that we have a dreadful situation here in the ACT in relation to the number of GPs that we have. We are short 60 GPs, which actually constitutes the lowest number per capita in Australia. This has been going down for quite some time.
Ms Gallagher: Wrong. The Northern Territory is the lowest. We are the second lowest.
MR HANSON: Well done, Ms Gallagher. That is commendable; well done. We are only the second worst. Fantastic! I suppose it depends on where you get your statistics from. I am relying on evidence that says it is the worst.
Ms Gallagher: So you excise the Northern Territory out of every national statistic?
MR HANSON: Well, if you think second to worst is good enough, Ms Gallagher, then brilliant.
Ms Gallagher: I do not. I do not but I am saying we are not the worst. I just want you to be factually correct.
Mr Seselja: Are you going to correct the record from yesterday?
Ms Gallagher: I will respond to that, Mr Seselja.
MR HANSON: Fantastic! I am sure that Ms Gallagher would agree with my concern that we do not have enough GPs. I think she said it in this chamber that we do not have enough GPs. Interestingly, in many other jurisdictions—in fact, the evidence I have seen in all other jurisdictions—the number of GPs per capita has been increasing whilst our number has been decreasing.
We know that the situation in west Belconnen, in Ms Porter’s area of interest, is among the worst in the ACT. Before the recent spate of closures—six closures in north-west Canberra—we had one GP to every 3,274 people in west Belconnen compared to one GP for every 849 people throughout the rest of Canberra.
Do not think that this is just a problem that has arisen with the closure of west Belconnen. The implications for the health and wellbeing of the people of west
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