Keeping Regional Hospitals Open
Ensuring access to quality healthcare for every Riverina community.
Staffing, Not Spin: The Heart of Regional Health
“A hospital without staff isn’t a hospital.” That is not a slogan. It is the lived experience of families across regional Australia who have watched services shrink, waiting times stretch, and specialist care drift further away from the communities they are meant to serve. We can announce capital upgrades and celebrate new buildings, but when emergency departments close due to staffing shortages, when maternity services are suspended, and when GP clinics stop accepting new patients, the physical infrastructure becomes secondary.
Strengthening Our Health Workforce
Regional health care does not have an infrastructure crisis. It has a workforce crisis, and unless we address that workforce crisis directly, with disciplined, transparent, long-term investment, we will continue to fund announcements rather than outcomes.
A Costed and Estimated 10-Year Workforce Plan
The Health & Essential Services Workforce Package
I am proposing a ten-year plan with estimated total costs between $280 million and $420 million. These figures are projections based on comparable workforce incentive programmes, housing construction benchmarks, and current regional health salary frameworks. Final allocations would be refined in consultation with federal and state health departments, but the scale of investment required is clear. On average, this represents approximately $28–42 million per year over a decade, a modest proportion of overall health spending, but strategically directed at the core problem: staffing.
Regional Health Worker Housing: $120–180 Million
Housing is the single largest structural barrier to recruitment and retention. An estimated $120–180 million over ten years would fund purpose-built key worker accommodation, refurbishment of existing housing stock near major regional facilities, and structured rental assistance for essential health staff. These projections are based on current regional construction costs and comparable key worker housing programmes already operating in other jurisdictions. If we expect professionals to relocate to regional communities, affordable and secure accommodation must be part of the equation.
Salary Loadings & Retention Bonuses: $90–130 Million
Recruitment without retention is financially reckless. Constant turnover erodes continuity of care and drives up system costs. An estimated $90–130 million over ten years would fund structured regional salary loadings and multi-year retention incentives tied to sustained service in regional facilities. These figures are modelled on existing rural loading frameworks and scaled to address chronic shortage classifications. Keeping an experienced nurse or GP in place for five years is significantly more efficient than repeatedly absorbing recruitment and relocation costs.
Training Pipelines & Rural Placements: $40–60 Million
Long-term sustainability requires building a local workforce pipeline. An estimated $40–60 million over a decade would expand rural clinical school placements, bonded scholarships for regional students entering nursing and allied health, and structured training pathways linked to guaranteed regional placements. The data is clear: health professionals who train in regional areas are far more likely to remain there.
Telehealth & Mobile Clinics: $30–50 Million
Geography will always shape regional health delivery. An estimated $30–50 million over ten years would strengthen telehealth infrastructure and expand mobile specialist outreach clinics to support smaller communities. These projections are benchmarked against existing telehealth expansion programmes and mobile service delivery models currently operating nationally. Telehealth is not a substitute for in-person care. It is an amplifier, ensuring smaller communities remain connected to specialist expertise.
Shared Responsibility
These estimated projections assume a cooperative funding model:
- Approximately 70% Federal health funding
- Around 20% State health systems
- Roughly 10% Private and NGO partnerships
This reflects how health funding is already structured in Australia. The Commonwealth must lead, but sustainable reform requires partnership.
Why This Is Economically Responsible
When regional services close or operate below capacity, the costs do not vanish; they compound. Ambulance transfers increase. Preventable conditions escalate into emergencies. Workforce participation declines when families must travel long distances for care. Investing an estimated $28–42 million per year to stabilise staffing is significantly more cost-effective than absorbing the downstream expenses of systemic under-resourcing.
Honest Investment, Strong Health
This proposal is not about overspending. It is about spending correctly. Regional Australians do not expect extravagance. They expect reliability. They expect emergency departments that are staffed, maternity services that remain open, and primary care that provides continuity rather than uncertainty. Above all, they expect honesty. “A hospital without staff isn’t a hospital.” If we are serious about strengthening regional Australia, then we must invest, responsibly, transparently, and with clear projections, in the people who keep the doors open every day.