The minister said that retaining the current workforce of doctors in rural communities was essential.

“We have to encourage them and their families to stay,” he said.

“Recruiting people to the bush is important.”

The minister spoke of a “tsunami of doctors coming out of the university system.”

“We have a distribution problem with medical practitioners.

“If we keep doing the same thing, there will be 7,000 excess graduates with no places to go, but we have a shortage of rural and regional doctors.

“We are looking at a whole health workforce strategy.  In the 1990s, we even had a shortage of graduates.  We have a distribution problem now.

“We have a lot of initiatives and we are trying to establish the Integrated Rural Training Pipeline,” said the minister.

That initiative was introduced by the Turnbull government to help to retain medical graduates in rural areas by better coordinating the different stages of training within regions.

There are three components:

Dr Gillespie said that in the medical profession, graduates have seven years’ training after university.

If 90% of graduates are in cities for those years, they are more likely to stay there, as they put down roots, and perhaps settle there.

Dr Gillespie said it’s a challenge for the Coalition government.

“We are looking at that whole workforce paradigm and trying to flip it.

“The Commonwealth values what the Rural Doctors Network does.  Rural doctors are highly valuable and we want more of them. Later this year, we will have a holistic government response.

“Legislation is now in the Senate for the creation of a Rural Health Commissioner,” he added.

For many doctors, the conference was a well-earned break from the challenging life of a rural GP, while providing a chance to discuss key policy issues and hone their clinical skills.