Remote Australia Matters conference

A national conference held in south west Queensland has come up with a five-point plan to address rural health needs.

Transcript

00:00 I understand there was a slight hiccup in transmission last night,

00:03 which makes this the perfect opportunity to thank you.

00:07 Some replied, some carried pigeons, apparently got the messages.

00:11 I'd particularly like to thank and welcome Senator Susan McDonald,

00:15 Federal Shadow Minister for Northern Australia,

00:18 who committed to being at this conference right from the moment she received her invitation.

00:22 I'd also like to welcome the Honourable Rob Muldoon,

00:26 LNP Member for Southport, President of Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine,

00:31 to attend that meeting, all of them panellists on our program.

00:35 Needless to say, we have enormous respect for their decision to come to charge us,

00:39 because as I keep saying to the media, remote gets lost in the rural health context,

00:43 so we're focusing on remote.

00:45 All of those of you who are going to help us drive this campaign

00:51 to focus attention on remote Australia,

00:53 establish a minimum stepwise advice,

00:56 all of you will be embedded into one of the five working groups I mentioned a moment ago.

01:00 You will have contact details for everyone in the room,

01:03 so that going forward, if you're working to improve the access you and your community have to primary health care,

01:09 you will have direct email and key points of contact.

01:13 That's it, let's get this show on the road.

01:20 It's not good enough just to have a nurse,

01:22 you want someone who's got the skills you need to provide the service,

01:27 that you need in the context of a community,

01:31 and your family, small teams,

01:34 and so what we end up with is quite a bit of churn.

01:38 One of our failings in Australia has been to address

01:42 the support of developing the skill sets that we need,

01:46 in an organised way.

01:48 So we've got amazing people who put their hand up.

01:50 We've got fabulous opportunities to upskill who we are.

01:56 Both those things have come up repeatedly,

01:58 and certainly everyone here with lived experience knows that.

02:00 Yeah, this is really important.

02:02 We've started tackling this in medicine with the Royal Generalist Pathway.

02:06 We haven't done that in...

02:08 And set that off for...

02:10 There's certainly lots of new technology that...

02:12 Yeah, doing pathology...

02:14 ..appropriate, that we actually need to recognise that

02:18 people certainly do deserve good health...