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President’s Blog: Health division: more than sum of parts?
Friday March 21, 2025
Western Australian politics’ worst-kept secret came to pass in the last week, with previous Minister for Health Amber-Jade Sanderson moving out of her old portfolio. The name of her replacement was not predicted by the pundits, but neither was the structure under which the broader Health portfolio would be ministerially governed. The Premier Roger Cook announced Meredith Hammat as the new Minister for Health, along with John Carey as the Minister for Health Infrastructure, Sabine Winton as Minister for Preventative Health, and Simone McGurk as Minister for Aged Care and Seniors.
So while there will be quite a bit of detail to come on how this will work, what’s the AMA’s initial take on all of this?
Firstly, the idea of dividing up the health portfolio, no matter who has carriage of each, is not necessarily a bad thing. It is a huge policy area, and needs not only significant forward planning to meet the future needs of the health of Western Australians, but urgent catching up to address the significant capacity constraints that exist today. However, it has been described as a “team approach,” which of course means there needs to be a leader. We would expect this to be the Minister for Health, but how this plays out remains to be seen. If there is no clear leadership within the group, the Premier ultimately has to take responsibility.
The creation of a health infrastructure ministerial portfolio is sensible. We have been calling for many years, including throughout the recent election campaign, for the upgrading of our health infrastructure, much of which is in disrepair. We are also clearly in need of more hospital beds. We hope that this new portfolio will be focused not only on delivering the New Women and Babies Hospital project, but more broadly on health infrastructure with a horizon well beyond the next election. Private hospital infrastructure sits outside State control, but it must continue to be considered as a critical part of our future overall health infrastructure.
We also support the creation of a Minister for Preventative Health, and look forward to learning exactly what this will entail. We also expect that the Minister for Aged Care and Seniors will have an important role in ensuring we have enough residential aged care capacity in WA to ensure that older patients stuck in hospital awaiting placement can enjoy a better quality of life in a more suitable environment, whilst freeing up hospital beds. We are very keen to see an end to the State-Federal blame game in this area.
I’m looking forward to catching up with Minister Hammat in the next couple of weeks to prosecute the AMA’s agenda for a better health system. Other than the issues mentioned above, we will have fixing the medical training pipeline right up at the top of our list of priorities. We also look forward to directly engaging with Ministers Carey, Winton and McGurk, along with the new Opposition Leader.
