The Australian Medical Association (AMA) has told a parliamentary inquiry that bureaucratic duplication and a “blunt” 10-year rural service requirement are pushing skilled overseas-trained doctors away from Australia.
AMA President Dr. Danielle McMullen said international medical graduates (IMGs) “currently make up approximately 56 percent of our GPs ... and 53 percent of the rural medical workforce,” adding that “without them, many regional, rural, and remote communities would have little or no access to healthcare.”
McMullen appeared before the Joint Standing Committee on Migration’s during its inquiry into the value of skilled migration on Sept. 11.
The AMA’s written submission (pdf) gives the same figures and notes IMG recruitment has grown more than 13 percent since before the COVID-19 pandemic, with 42,056 IMGs registered as medical practitioners in 2021/22.
McMullen said IMGs are too often “treated or discussed as a temporary fix for poor workforce planning” despite holding together “some of the most vulnerable parts of our healthcare system.”
Australian Medical Association president Dr. Danielle McMullen, gives evidence to the inquiry into the value of skilled migration. (Screen capture from Parliament livestream).
Duplication Adding to Registration Woes
Dr. Mahalekshmi Selvanathan, a rural GP and the AMA’s IMG representative, told the committee the registration pathway is fragmented because “the bodies are not talking to each other and the process is just too long.”
She said it took her almost four years from receiving a job offer to starting work in her general practice, pointing to issues like repeated document verification, an English test, and separate applications for provider and prescriber numbers.
“Everything is done again,” she said of the duplication between visa, registration and employer processes.
The delays can mean losing specialists altogether, Selvanathan said.
She described a friend, a cardiothoracic surgeon, who waited four years for his qualifications to be assessed before he found a job in the UK.
“For me, it was a big loss,” she said, noting he had been willing to work anywhere in Australia.
McMullen said recent reforms, following the Kruk review of health practitioner regulatory settings in 2022, streamlined accreditation for high-needs specialties including general practice, and mostly benefitted doctors from the UK and New Zealand.
The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency has separately reported a 27 percent rise in international doctor registrations in 2023/24, and cut average processing times to 87 days from 110 days the previous year.
Both witnesses criticised the Distribution Priority Area (DPA) system and its associated 10-year moratorium, which requires many IMGs to work in underserved areas to access Medicare billing.
McMullen said DPA classifications have expanded to cover “essentially ... the vast majority of Australia,” blunting their ability to direct doctors specifically toward rural and remote communities.
The AMA’s submission calls for the moratorium to be progressively wound back and replaced with “targeted rural incentives” and “structured support programmes.”
Even Doctors Can’t Find Housing
Housing emerged as a practical barrier to retention. Selvanathan said some doctors end up “staying in shared accommodation ... or sleeping on the sofa” because landlords require a local rental history, and said visa settings should account for schooling, spousal employment and community support.
Both doctors linked visa dependency to workplace vulnerability.
McMullen said tying a doctor’s visa to a single employer leaves overseas-trained doctors “trapped” and unable to safely report racism or discrimination; the AMA’s submission recommends decoupling visa sponsorship from individual employers.
The submission also calls for a national, time-bound service standard for registration and visa processing, and for an independent national health workforce planning body to guide future settings.
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