Senator EGGLESTON (3:21 PM) —It must have been a blessed relief for Senator Mackay to see the clock tick around to zero, because she was really struggling to find any points at all to make about this matter. This report does say—and I have a copy of the Audit Office's The administration of veterans' health care report here—that in fact there are differences between the levels of services provided for veterans in country areas and for those in cities and large urban centres.

Most of our veterans are older people who very often require medical and paramedical services. So, in the most part, the differences reflect differences in the provision of medical services between country and metropolitan areas of Australia. There is no doubt at all that there is a difference. Thanks largely to the sad legacy of Labor, who did nothing while they were in government to improve medical services in regional areas, there are deficiencies in medical services in regional areas. There is not only a shortage of general practitioners but also a shortage of specialists who can deal with, for example, the respiratory, dermatological or psychiatric problems of veterans. There are shortages of physiotherapists and many other kinds of specialists who deal with the various medical problems of veterans.

In contrast to the dismal and sadly inadequate record of the Labor Party, who while in government did so very little to improve medical services in regional areas, the coalition has done a great deal. By improving medical services in a general way in regional areas, the coalition has also enabled the services to veterans to be improved. For example, in a general way there has been a shortage of doctors in rural areas but, under policies followed by the coalition government, for the first time in a generation there has been an increase in the number of doctors providing medical services in rural areas. In fact, in 1997-98 doctor numbers increased by 5.3 per cent in rural Australia and by 19.6 per cent in remote areas. Many general practitioners in country areas are local medical officers for the Department of Veterans' Affairs, and the local GPs provide services to veterans in that way.

The need for specialist services in regional areas is also very important in terms of services to veterans. As a group, veterans quite often have respiratory illnesses. They very often have psychiatric problems. Those who served in Vietnam, especially, it seems, have psychiatric problems plus things like dermatological and orthopaedic conditions. This government has facilitated the visits of specialists to the bush so that veterans who live in country areas are able to access medical services in those areas. One of the examples of this which I can quote is the provision of psychiatric services in country Western Australia. In the past, especially in the years under the Labor government, the problem was not even recognised, much less rectified. The current government has promoted a psychiatric service for people throughout regional WA and in other regional areas of Australia, and this has been of great value to veterans.

The need for improved medical services in general in country areas is something which does concern the government. The point that less money is spent on veterans' affairs in regional areas compared with metropolitan areas just reflects the better services in metropolitan areas in terms of hospitals, physiotherapy, and so on. The inadequacy of medical services to veterans in country areas just serves to underline Labor's grossly inadequate veterans' affairs policy, which had no vision or substance. Over the years, Labor has played politics with the welfare of veterans. (Time expired)