Top doctor’s budget plea: WA must spend on people as well as infrastructure
The head of Western Australia’s peak medical body has urged the Cook government to invest in people as well as infrastructure ahead of the state budget being unveiled on Thursday.
Labor recently announced a $1.5 billion spend in health infrastructure as part of the 2026-2027 budget, taking the state’s total investment to $5.5 billion over the forward estimates.
That includes the largest building hospitals program in WA’s history, with a $500 million uplift to the Building Hospitals Fund taking total allocations into the fund to $2 billion over the next four years.
At the time of the announcement, Health Minister Meredith Hammat said the expansion of the public health system was backed by record funding to both build capacity and bring it online as soon as possible.
“In just a few months’ time, Mt Lawley Hospital will officially be a public hospital, providing more beds and theatres to increase access to timely health care, and easing pressure on our tertiary hospitals,” she said.
“We’re also preparing now for the mammoth task of commissioning the new Women and Babies Hospital, as well as the hundreds of additional beds at hospitals set to come online across Western Australia in the coming months and years.”
However, while Australian Medical Association WA president Dr Kyle Hoath welcomed the spending allocation for the state’s hospitals, he said more needed to be done to keep doctors working in the state.
“We need to see a focus on making sure our workplaces are safe, that our people are well-supported, so they can do the job, so that they can be out there looking after your loved ones, day in, day out, and helping keep our community healthy,” he said.
“We’ll be looking for not just an investment in beds, in hospital infrastructure, but an investment in our people as well, both increasing the number of health professionals working – doctors included – but also ensuring that there are allowances to provide for some of these wellbeing and quality-of-life adjustments that are equitable and are fair and that our profession deserve.”
AMAWA released the findings from its annual Hospital Health Check survey on Tuesday, with 56 per cent of respondents reporting moderate to high burnout – a 4 per cent increase from the previous year.
Opposition health spokeswoman Libby Mettam said the government needed to listen to frontline health professionals when it came to spending on the state’s health system.
“They need to take on board the concerns that we are hearing from doctors and nurses every day, which points to a broken health system under the Cook Labor government and patient lives that are being put at risk,” she said.
“We have world-class doctors and nurses and health workers, but they are being failed by a government that is not living up to and supporting a world-class hospital system.”
Hoath said the AMA had been in contact with WA Health about the results of its latest survey and said the government was taking the issues seriously.
“Every year we do Hospital Health Week, at least in my two years of being here as the results being announced, the government, the ministers and the department, have engaged us in conversations around what can we do to make this better,” he said.
“We sent out an early release of the results to the government department and some other key stakeholders yesterday, and I was immediately engaged with the Department of Health around what we can look at.”
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