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Coomera City Medical Centre and Growth on the Gold Coast
The following appeared as part of Stuart's regular piece in The Local Newsletters.
At a time of great population growth on the Gold Coast, I don’t have any time for needless bureaucracy or lack of forward thinking when its price is a lack of services and infrastructure.
Parts of the Gold Coast are tipped to double in population in only the next three years. The Coomera area is one of these areas.
I’ve been assisting the Coomera City Medical Centre so they can get government approval to replace a doctor that is leaving the practice. Hiring of doctors that are not trained in Australia is a highly regulated process – it specifically requires the government to nominate the area in which the doctor is to be hired as an ‘area of need’.
The Government doesn’t specifically state what constitutes an ‘area of need’, it just asks Australians to trust it when sorting out where doctors should work.
Coomera City Medical Centre has, in the past, been designated as operating within an area of need – and it makes sense. Australia has an average of one doctor to around 1100 people. Coomera has one doctor for every 1600 or so.
The view across the Coomera City Medical Centre's own car park - more homes on their way
So you can imagine my disbelief when for the second time in less than six months the medical practice has had difficulty replacing a doctor due to government red-tape. Coomera apparently has enough doctors to cope with projected growth according to the Department of Health and Ageing yet not according to local residents.
The Government should be looking to the future and preparing for that growth rather than just trying to maintain the status quo. The centre shouldn’t have problems simply replacing doctors when really we need additional doctors in this area to prepare for the future.
The biggest issue in the northern part of our city is this growth. More people means we need more roads, more hospital beds, more public transport, more doctors, more schools and more police.
While there has been some movement in these areas, it’s just not enough to maintain services and infrastructure – the area needs to constantly increase services as the population grows.
While it’s obvious the impact this growth will have on the areas in which it will occur, such as Coomera, the impact on the broader city is not quite as obvious but quite logical. If you live in Nerang or Southport or Labrador you’re a fair distance from the epicentre of this growth but not from its potential effects.
If you live in these more well-established areas, you probably use the same highway, public hospital and major arterial roads that your new northern neighbours will. You’re probably commuting to work or taking your kids to school on the same roads these new residents will use. On the weekends, you’ll use the same roads to get to the beach or the major shopping centres. Your water will come from the same dam and your electricity from the same power stations. If you work in Brisbane, you’ll catch the same train.
Rapid population growth will affect all Gold Coasters, and we have got to look forward rather than waiting for the inevitable infrastructure bottlenecks to occur. You can be assured that I’ll continue to be very vocal on these issues to make Government work for us, not against us.
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