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