The Rural Doctors Association of Australia is disappointed the Rudd Government has largely ignored the health needs of rural communities in its first budget.
The association says very little additional funding has been allocated to get rural health off life support and increase the number of health professionals in rural and remote Australia.
"This really is a case of different piper, same tune" RDAA President, Dr Peter Rischbieth, said.
"Unfortunately rural health has received the same poor treatment in this budget as it did in budgets delivered under the previous Coalition Government.
"We had hoped for a marked improvement in rural health funding this year, with the election of the new Government, the fact it has said on many occasions that rural healthcare desperately needs more support, and the fact that its own Rural Health Workforce Audit showed the rural doctor shortage is much worse than even we had expected.
"Of great concern to RDAA is the fact that a crucial, cost-effective Rural Rescue Package put forward by RDAA and the AMA to get and keep more doctors in rural Australia has not been funded."
Dr Rischbieth said at the end of the day, the Government can't say it doesn’t know how bad the rural health crisis is—we have repeated over and over again that an additional 16,000 health professionals are needed in the bush, including an additional 1000 rural doctors.