AMA warns of doctor shortage as outer suburbs, rural towns compete for GPs amid skilled migration debate

Doctor shortages previously confined to rural and regional Australia are now hitting outer suburban communities, the Australian Medical Association has warned.

The peak professional body representing doctors and medical students highlighted gaps in Australia’s healthcare coverage during its appearance before a parliamentary inquiry into skilled migration.

AMA president Danielle McMullen said attracting and retaining skilled international workers to fill shortages requires resourcing key areas like housing, schooling, spousal job support, training, supervision and community integration.

Dr McMullen highlighted the “deeply concerning” lack of housing among factors contributing to poor attraction and retention of doctors.

“I think rural housing is a significant issue, and it is deeply concerning that we’ve got doctors essentially living in even short periods of homelessness.

“They’re a pretty resourceful bunch but couch surfing isn’t a long-term recruitment.”

Regional NSW GP Mahalekshmi Selvanathan also gave testimony at the hearing and echoed Dr McMullen’s concerns, saying GPs “sleeping on the sofa” was a reality in the bush.

“I’ve got doctors who are staying in shared rooms, shared accommodation, through their friends or sleeping on the sofa because they’re not getting the house,” she said.

International doctors have long been a staple to fill gaps and currently make up 53 per cent of Australia’s rural medical workforce.

The inquiry comes as major parties jostle over migration numbers, with Labor aiming for 225,000 per year and the Coalition proposing to tie the figure to housing completions as it fends off a One Nation surge.

However, Dr McMullen highlighted the vital role of foreign GPs — arguing that as doctor shortages impacted more outer suburbs, regional healthcare would only be placed under even greater strain.

“We are cognisant of the fact that rural and regional remote Australia have high needs. But we are also increasingly seeing outer metropolitan suburbs of our major cities with significant health disparities and health equity concerns,” she said.

“With some of the changes to general practice workforce distribution, where now everything, including most outer metropolitan areas, are listed as shortage areas, and we hear anecdotally that rural and regional Australia is finding it harder to recruit and retain their doctors.

“It’s why we need a whole of workforce strategy.”

She labelled a requirement for foreign physicians to spend 10 years working outside urban centres after arriving in Australia and location restrictions as “blunt instruments”.

“Longer term, we do think there needs to be an unwinding of the 10-year moratorium and more targeted fit-for-purpose recruitment and retention tools with incentives and supports,” she said.

Dr McMullen added that more consideration was needed for foreign GPS heading into regional areas as they often they also faced “isolation, inadequate supervision, and racism”.

“They also have to navigate a fragmented and costly combination of migration issues, registration, accreditation, and employment processes,” she said.

“With quite a lot of duplication and inconsistency between jurisdictions, long delays, and restrictions that limit their mobility and career progression.

But she highlighted that skilled migration shouldn’t be the substitute for long-term domestic workforce planning and reiterated the AMA’s long-standing position that training locally needed to be boosted.

Dozens of regional Australian councils fed up with forking out millions to keep doctors in their patch took their call for greater Federal government support to Canberra during the 2026 National General Assembly of local governments.

A delegation of councils warned that without urgent intervention towns across Australia would be plunged into a doctor drought.

Many are forced to chip into their rates budget, some spending up to 20 per cent, to sustain a GP clinic in their areas, according to Caroline Robinson, an independent facilitator for a sideline event on the issue.

Already, councils across Australia unable to foot the bill are seeing GPs close their doors. In early June, Kalbarri Doctors Surgery in WA announced its closure.

Less than a fortnight later, Boyup Brook councillors unanimously voted that they couldn’t continue their two-decades of support for their local service.

Shire president Helen O’Connell had said while the medical practice was “critical” for the community it had come at “significant cost” to ratepayers.

Ms Robinson said it was a difficult decision for councils as they grapple with growing maintenance and infrastructure budgets.

She said among the 40 councils in attendance at a Canberra conference on the issue this week were representatives from six councils across WA’s Wheatbelt and Great Southern — Lake Grace, Kojonup, Gnowangerup, Jerramungup, Ravensthorpe, and Narembeen.

The were joined by local government representatives from Tasmania, Queensland and South Australia.

“We had over 40 councils represented across Australia that are all paying for GPs,” she said.

“There is market failure occurring in communities of generally less than 5000 people.

“It’s growing because the cost of doing business is growing, and the Medicare bulk billing doesn’t cover the true cost.

“And there are no programs and incentives tailored for small rural communities.”

She said the small communities were fighting to attract doctors from the city and the peri-urban areas.”

Among those to air concerns was the New South Wales’ Bogan Shire Council, which reported a “$600,000” shortfall in funding after running a clinic and employing bulk-billing GPs and nurse practitioners.

“Their population is only 2500 so that’s 20 per cent of their rate base. So, then it means that budget isn’t going on to roads, it isn’t going to community facilities, or the core local government pieces that they should be funding,” Ms Robinson said.

A Government spokesman said it had been investing in significantly “more bulk billing, more doctors and more nurses for the bush” and that additional support meant more doctors had joined the system in the last two years than any time in the past decade.

“Bulk billing incentives are paid to GPs for every patient they bulk bill and this payment is scaled by remoteness with GPs in remote areas receiving up to 190 per cent more than in metro locations,” he said.

“More doctors are registering to practice in Australia, more junior doctors are training to become GPs, and more medical graduates are aspiring to become GPs since our Government’s record investments to strengthen Medicare.

“In 2026, a record 2100 offers are expected to be made to junior doctors to begin Government-funded GP training, because of our investments.”

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke had been slated to unveil Labor’s plan to regain control of migration at a National Press Club speech over parliament’s winter recess, but it was called off after dispute internally over their position.

While One Nation’s stance on immigration has fluctuated over the past six months, their latest online policy platform proposes capping annual visas at 130,000 to “ease pressure on housing, wages, and infrastructure”.