Transcript: ABC Radio Adelaide – Federal budget

AMA SA President Dr John Williams has welcomed the Government's investment in health in the 2025/26 federal budget. The commitment of an additional $8.5 billion funding for Medicare and general practice follows many years of AMA campaigning about the need to address the neglect of Medicare. But Dr Williams says there remains a need for genuine reform to ensure doctors can deliver the level of care their patients need.

Transcript: AMA SA President Dr John Williams on ABC Radio Adelaide with Rory McClaren.

(26 March, 2025) 

Subjects: Medicare, general practice, primary care, election, auspol

Rory McClaren: Dr John Williams, surely this has been a good news budget for people working in and around the health sector?

Dr John Williams: It’s the right amount of money. Health really needs investment. I think we all understand it’s failing at multiple points. But the Government hasn’t listened to the AMA about where that money should go. We’re really worried about the difficult areas of health – the patients who need help and support – and that’s in chronic disease, aged care, and mental health.

Medicare was devised more than 40 years ago, a great system, but it hasn’t changed fundamentally, and we really want to see the funding well directed so it deals with those really important areas of health. So that’s our main concern.

Certainly, the investment in general practice training is fantastic. On workforce, we’d love to see an independent body to help distribute our workforce well across the country, especially as a rural doctor – we have great needs in rural areas and great deficits.

In regard to public hospitals, we know that our capacity has to increase, and we’d love to see the National Health Reform Agreement go ahead to help patients move better through the system.

Our private hospital system really needs oversight. We know that people are spending a lot of money on that but not necessarily getting the care they hope for and expect. So that really needs oversight.

The funding into general practice is great, but we’d love to see it modernise Medicare so that we can have longer consults with our patients to deliver that more complex care.

It’s kind of like four wheels of a car. We can’t just fix up one, they all have to be repaired at the same time otherwise we can’t move forward as a health system. It really needs a multi-pronged approach.

We appreciate the effort this government has made, but they really need to listen to the doctors on the ground about what’s needed to deliver care to their patients. Yes, big steps forward, but we’d love to see it nuanced.

Rory McClaren: Dr John Williams, another little stat that I picked up in the back of the budget papers where I happened to find the net migration figures for South Australia was also about the expected life expectancy of Australians, and that's expected to increase this financial year. But that also has a potential impact on the health system, doesn't it? If Australians are living longer, they're going to need care for longer and health care for longer, aren't they?

Dr John Williams: Yeah, absolutely. I must say that, you know, we've been talking about this since I started training in medicine, which was many years ago.

Rory McClaren: And you don't have to say how long ago, John. It's okay.

Dr John Williams: Thank you. With respect, this is not new information. I've seen that through my career. What we used to do for patients in their 70s, we're now doing for patients in their 80s and 90s, which is fantastic. A health system has to address so many needs, but the needs are becoming more complex. We can do so much more, but that takes more time with patients. More patients with chronic disease, more people are surviving cancer – they need additional care. So medicine is a lot different to when I started and we need to adjust to the change. So that's why we're advocating for modernising Medicare to deal with things as they are now. And also we know that, you know, that money is well spent.