AMA Budget Response
DR HAIKERWAL: This is a massive missed opportunity. At a time of massive budget surplus, we see no big picture for health.
We're very pleased with the increased spending in medical research. Medical research drives quality and drives progress and drives the best health care we can get in this country.
The mental health initiatives were announced during COAG. We need to see more detail but it's obviously a major step but requires the States to come on board.
Training, very important, but we need academic places, we need clinical training places in the hospital system and we need to make sure we back up and support the students as they go through the system, not simply throw more students into the system.
And as far as the situation is concerned with preventive health care, we actually need more than just telling people to eat better and having preventive health checks. We need some leadership from Government on obesity, the biggest health crisis we see before us.
And our biggest crisis in the Indigenous health population has not been addressed at this point in time. We need to see more services in this area and the services should include things like housing as well as health care which are the drivers for that area's needs.
Mr Hockey has announced the Smartcard proposal. We think we need to see more detail about this at this point in time. At the moment the Smartcard is a very dumb card. Thank you.
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