Thank you very much Doctor, my parliamentary colleagues Kerry Bartlett and Steven Pringle, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for inviting me to participate in the launch of the Practice Nurse Initiative here in the Hawkesbury and under the auspices of the Hawkesbury Division of General Practice.
We have made a lot of changes. We hope all of them will prove to be beneficial to the Medicare system, which has underpinned healthcare in this country for more than 20 years. The MedicarePlus package really has three or four elements – the increases in the rebates for bulkbilled services to children under 16 and cardholders; the very significant innovation with the introduction of a safety net for the very first time, which I believe will prove to be a very valuable additional piece of insurance, especially for Australian families; and very importantly and very relevantly to today';s announcement, a large number of workforce measures, all of which are designed to recognise that the biggest single challenge we have in relation to the provision of daily health services is of course the shortage of doctors and other professionals in certain parts of Australia.
And the Hawkesbury is an area that has been designated as one of workforce shortage. I for the life of me, having come through this area over the years, being somebody who has grown up in Sydney, I can';t for the life of me imagine why people wouldn';t want to come and live and work in such a nice part of Australia, but it is a fact that you do have workforce challenges. And the purpose of the Practice Nurse Initiative in particular was to recognise first and foremost of course the great professionalism of practice nurses and for the very first time to introduce an MBS scheduled fee in relation to the work of practice nurses, and also secondarily, but very importantly, to see their work as augmenting and being in partnership with the work of general practitioners and thereby allowing general practitioners to focus on areas where their particular expertise was so necessary.
So part of our programme was to provide about 1,600 additional practice nurses and to give grants to practices and new rebates to carry out medical services such as immunisation and wound management. And from March of this year, grants are available for practices in urban areas of workforce shortage to assist with employing a practice nurse, and that of course is where the Hawkesbury comes in. And the majority of this area, and indeed the whole of this area, and the majority of the area represented by my colleague Kerry Bartlett in Federal Parliament, is defined as an outer urban area of workforce shortage. And letters were sent to eligible GP practices in the Macquarie electorate about the initiative on the 1st of March 2004 and I';m delighted to acknowledge that the Hawkesbury Division of General Practice is hiring two full-time practice nurses to assist the local medical practices, and this is a direct result of the Practice Nurse Initiative and it will, as outlined by the Chairman of the Division, the Hawkesbury Division, it will provide a valuable additional service to the excellent services the GPs already provide.
And MedicarePlus will extend the provision of practice nurses over a period of years and the full additional number of 1,600 will be in place by the year 2007. And I think there is a total of about $140 million from now until 2007 that will be provided to support the Practice Nurse Initiative.
We have, despite all of the criticisms that are from time to time made about health services in this country, there are deficiencies, there are always changes and improvements that can be made, but we do have by world standards excellent health services in Australia. We have wonderful doctors, we have highly trained and very well skilled other health professionals and they all work in a very dedicated fashion. I';m a great admirer of the medical profession. I think it often comes in for unfair criticism. I respect and admire the work of GPs. They are integral not only to the delivery of high quality health services, but they';re also integral to the sense of community wellbeing and the cohesion of a local community. And the contribution that a well-supported health service can make to the sense of security and wellbeing of a local community can never be overestimated. So I';m very pleased that the Hawkesbury Division of General Practice, Dr Crampton, has been able to take advantage of this particular part of our initiative.
We';re putting about $2.8 billion over a period of four years into the MedicarePlus initiative and we believe it will improve, it will provide additional choice, it will recognise the workforce shortage challenges, and very importantly with the new safety net which is at levels of $300 for families getting Family Tax Benefits and cardholders, and $700 for the rest of the community, and any out of pocket expenses over and above either of those thresholds to be reimbursed at 80 per cent, is a remarkably effective and I believe very generous new safety net and it will bring a lot of peace of mind to people. But the whole concept of arrangements like that are not that they should be utilised by everybody all the time, but they provide through the insurance principle a safety net and a degree of security and degree of reassurance.
So I';m delighted that we have been able to negotiate all of these initiatives through the Parliament and I want to congratulate Tony Abbott as the Health Minister for the work that he has done in this area, to congratulate the Hawkesbury Division of General Practice for its involvement. I wish the two practice nurses well and I';m sure that they';ll make a very important contribution and it will be another way of further improving the health services in this part of our community.
Thank you.
[ends]