Subjects: The Budget and regional and rural communities
E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………
PRIME MINISTER:
Good evening. Responsible budgets have been one of our top priorities over the last four years and this means not spending money the Government doesn’t have. By living within our means, the Government will have repaid $50 billion of the $80 billion Government debt that Labor ran up in its last five years. Paying back so much of Labor’s debt has reduced debt interest payments by $3 billion a year. This money can now be spent on more important things, like meeting our responsibilities to country Australia. I strongly believe that people living in regional areas have a perfect right to the kind of services like proper health care that those of us in the city take for granted.
It’s just not good enough that there is one GP for every thousand people in the cities, while there is only one for every fifteen hundred in the country. To tackle this real problem, we will boost the number of GP registrars in regional areas by at least 225 and double the number of scholarships for country students to go into medical training. We will introduce incentives and meet the travel costs of specialists to go out to deliver services in regional areas and fund local communities to pay for a range of allied health services. There will also be 85 new regional health services, and based on successful facilities in places like Wagga, we will establish nine new clinical schools and three new university departments of rural health.
This is a practical plan to deliver more doctors and better health services in rural communities. It sends a very important message that country people have every right to share in the nation’s prosperity. Good night.