Tony Ryall

Wellington, June 29 NZPA - A significant intake into the Government's voluntary bonding scheme for medical graduates will help address a problem of New Zealand-trained doctors heading to Australia, says Health Minister Tony Ryall.

Mr Ryall said today 501 graduates, including 64 doctors, 45 midwives and 392 nurses, had this year been signed up and accepted into the scheme, which offers student loan write-offs or cash incentives for graduates who commit to working in hard-to-staff regions for three to five years.

The Government had budgeted for 350 graduates but accepted all the applicants, meaning 1400 people were now in the scheme, Mr Ryall said.

Labour Party health spokeswoman Ruth Dyson said the Rural General Practitioner Network (RGPN) was concerned at the number of doctors leaving rural general practices and heading to Australia and that the Government didn't appear to be taking steps to address the issue.

The RPGN said Australian practices had in the last six months been aggressively recruiting New Zealand trained doctors and there were dozens of vacancies for doctors here.

The Association of Salaried Medical Specialists last week said it was financially irresponsible to allow so many doctors to head offshore when so much taxpayer money went towards training them.

Mr Ryall said the success of the bonding scheme, more funding for GP training, and in-the-hand wage increases which come in to force on October 1 as a result of tax cuts announced in budget would help ease the problem.