NSW residents should look harder at the “typical” State Budget as too often the “devil is in the details” warns Member for Murray Helen Dalton.
Mrs Dalton said the budget was promising a $5 billion spend on childcare, $500 million for housing, $400 million on Indigenous housing, education, justice, youth and health.
But she said it was not clear enough how much of that money would find its way to regional and rural areas of NSW.
“I have asked the ministers for some information about this,” Mrs Dalton said.
“But, given that we’ve got such a shortage in our health workforce, I’m hoping that it’ll be spread right across the electorate.
“But I’m yet to find out exactly or get some clarification from the Health Department on that.”
A dwindling health workforce is the current reality in Mrs Dalton’s electorate. With the number of overall GPs in regional NSW going from about 800 a few years ago to 200 today, Murray is facing a critical shortage.
This long-term concern is one Mrs Dalton said had been “skipped over” by the government as there were more immediate concerns for rural and regional people than what was addressed in the budget.
Mrs Dalton said the $30 million allocated to Wentworth Hospital was, by itself, not enough and encouraging doctors to stay in the region needed to be a top priority.
She said this could be addressed by increasing the Medicare rebate and the creation of a job-keeping package so the cost of attracting city doctors didn’t fall on small family and council-owned medical centres.
“We need to retain our GPs because at the moment they’re leaving in droves,” Mrs Dalton said.
Minister for Regional Health Bronnie Taylor said the government was working to recruit health care workers for the bush and retain them.
She said the government was doing this through an $833 million spend, including an incentive package of up to $10,000 per recruit as a sign-on bonus or to help with support areas such as housing and childcare.
Ms Taylor said the incentive scheme had been created as a longer-term solution to keep people in rural areas and there had not been a scheme like it in NSW before.
“This isn’t just about recruitment, it’s also about retention,” Ms Taylor told The Sydney Morning Herald. “We have to build rural expertise, but first we have to value it. We have to grow our own”.
Mrs Dalton suggested another long-term solution of giving greater support to high school students who were interested in STEM subjects.
She said support could take the form of introducing more subjects at these schools or providing tutors for students with the aim of getting them into medicine.
She said these students were more likely to return and stay in rural areas when they were older.
“To get into medicine is a hard road,” Mrs Dalton said. “They need all the help they can get.
“Those kids that have been educated and lived in the bush are more likely to come back out into the regions and rural areas and work as a GP.”
Mrs Dalton agreed much of the population lived on the coast but argued too much money was wasted on ill-thought out projects in Sydney.
“I’m just looking over what Sydney gets – it’s just amazing the amount of money that’s spent. If it’s spent wisely, then we all benefit.
“But from my understanding, a lot of these projects … they end up building them and they don’t work properly.”
Mrs Dalton said this expenditure by the government could have been redirected to rural and regional communities.
“I think people in the seat of Murray are very, very practical people. And when we hear and see the waste, we are absolutely disgusted.
“I’d like to know the bureaucrat who’s decided that a flag is worth $25 million. And it doesn’t matter what flag it is, it’s the fact that it is a flag and it’s costing $25 million. So I’d like to know the breakdown of that.”
Mrs Dalton has promised she would continue her fight for people in her electorate.
“We’ve got to make sure that we push for for services, just keep pushing as hard as we can for the for the electorate to get the services back in particularly health and education, roads and all that sort of basic stuff.”
