The National Rural Health Alliance has submitted a petition to the Australian Parliament calling for a 10-year National Rural Health Strategy including a schedule to the next National Health Reform Agreement embedding rural and remote policy and funded priorities for action.
Nearly 30 percent of Australians living and working outside of cities are being denied the basic human right to health and are dying younger than their urban counterparts. Rural Australians bring in two-thirds of Australia’s export earnings, 50 per cent of tourism income and produce over 90 per cent of Australia’s food. Yet, each year governments spend $848 less on the health of a person living rurally than someone who lives in the city.
The Alliance underscores that rural health has been neglected in policy, budgets and priority settings for too long and that Commonwealth and State investments are neither coordinated nor sustained.
