Waiting for help in the Outback

When it comes to healthcare in the Northern Territory, the problem isn’t just access, it’s philosophy. Politicians and pundits frame the issue as one of funding, yet no one asks the fundamental question: what has all this funding actually produced? In Alice Springs, Tennant Creek, and scores of remote Indigenous communities, waiting months and often years for a specialist or basic treatment has become the norm, not the exception. And each election cycle, the promise is the same, “more money.” But more of a bad idea doesn't make it a good one.

The idea that federal funding alone can mend a system already drowning in bureaucracy is not just naïve, it’s dangerous, and its killing Territorians. It shifts attention away from performance and onto pity, away from outcomes and toward optics. That’s how you end up with clinics full of administrators, not doctors, and programs built to last only until the next media cycle.

Healthcare isn’t just a policy issue, it’s a matter of survival. In Alice Springs, patients wait months and often years for specialist appointments, with some driving 1,500 kilometres to Adelaide for care. Remote clinics, serving 30% of the NT’s population, often lack basic diagnostic tools, and even basic PPE, leaving Indigenous communities, where chronic illness rates are 2.5 times the national average, particularly vulnerable. Long wait times and limited specialist access aren’t mere inconveniences, they’re a slow erosion of human dignity. As the 2025 federal election looms, political parties are promising to bridge these gaps with federal funding again, but their plans must be weighed against reason, history, and the unintended consequences of government intervention, which stifles competition and inflates costs, not just in value, in lives.

The Liberal and National Parties, including their NT allies in the CLP, promote decentralisation and public-private partnerships. On paper, this sounds like the right approach, encourage private practitioners to serve rural areas, reduce regulatory burdens, and incentivise innovation. In practice, however, they fail to dismantle the very regulatory machinery that stops these partnerships from working. A private medical provider can't survive in the NT if it must first navigate 14 layers of compliance, compete with taxpayer-funded monopoly clinics, and hire from a workforce trained to think in bureaucratic terms with bureaucratic levels of productivity. The Coalition's failure isn’t in principle, it’s in execution. Their reluctance to challenge entrenched health unions, federal health departments, and politically sensitive Indigenous health NGOs has neutered what could’ve been a pragmatic alternative to bloated state-run systems. Still, where their model has been applied with teeth, such as incentivising mobile GP units, expanding remote telehealth programs, and fast-tracking visas for rural medical professionals, results have improved. But those gains are quickly rolled back when federal agencies or NT Health bureaucrats inevitably “review” or “reform” them into oblivion. They also promise to double Medicare-tax payer subsidised mental health sessions to 20 and offer incentives to attract GPs to rural areas like Alice Springs. Their logic, empower doctors and patients through choice, not mandates. History shows some merit, a 2014 expansion of youth mental health services added 10 new Headspace centres, cutting wait times by 15% in regional areas. But government incentives distort markets. In 2013, similar GP incentives increased bulkbilling but drove up specialist fees by 12% as competition for urban doctors intensified, leaving rural gaps unfilled. The Coalition’s faith in market mechanisms is admirable, but it risks widening disparities if specialists still won’t trek to the Outback. There are a range of reasons why they won’t, their personal safety, the number one reason given. Labor’s solution to every healthcare problem, whether in Melbourne or Maningrida, is always the same. Expand government control and increase spending. This is presented as compassion. But compassion without competence is cruelty disguised as care. The NT Labor government has taken millions in federal health funds and turned them into studies, consultants, and culturally appropriate wellness programs that score high on inclusion but near zero on effectiveness. Clinics remain understaffed, fly-in-fly-out models dominate the landscape, and patients are routinely triaged not based on urgency but on availability. Rather than attract long-term doctors or specialists, Labor focuses on "equity" outcomes, hiring liaison officers and funding awareness campaigns, as if people in Yuendumu don’t know they need a dentist, they just need a dentist. They also have to stop acting like idiots, they’re not they just keep getting rewarded for it. Federal Labor, meanwhile, continues to push for centralised systems. Their latest pledge includes billions for Medicare expansion, public health infrastructure, and rural health academies. Yet no one seems to measure what these “investments” produce. More buildings do not equal more care. More programs do not equal more health.

They cite past efforts, like the 2011 Medicare Locals program, coordinated care in rural areas, reducing hospital admissions by 10%. But heavy-handed intervention backfires. The 2019 private health insurance premium cap of 2% led insurers to cut coverage, pushing costs onto patients, out-of-pocket expenses rose 8% in two years. Labor’s plans aim to ease immediate pain, but they always balloon the costs and crowd out private providers, reducing competition and innovation, ultimately killing more Territorians.

The Greens, animated by a vision of universal care, propose a $31.7 billion investment for 1,000 free healthcare clinics, covering GPs, dentists, and mental health services with no out-of-pocket costs. They also push $400 million for community mental health programs, targeting high-risk groups in remote NT areas. The Greens view healthcare as a universal right, unbounded by economics. Their answer? Nationalise more services, ban private alternatives, and provide everything for everyone. This vision, while morally satisfying to the suburban elite, collapses under its own financial and logistical weight in the NT. Their 2019 dental care pilot in Tasmania cut emergency dental visits by 20%, showing promise. However, data showed that competition and providers shrunk, so less providers, less service. But their rejection of private health rebates, as proposed in 2019, would likely shrink the private sector, hospitals saw a 5% drop in private patients then, overloading public systems. In the NT, where private clinics are already scarce, this could mean longer waits, not shorter ones, as government monopolies stifle efficiency. When private GPs are demonised as profit-seeking predators and bulk-billing is mandatory, no one stays in the profession for long. The result? Clinics that open three days a week, emergency departments flooded with non-emergencies, and patients waiting six months for a podiatrist.

The Greens want equality of access. What they deliver is equality of delay. They are called Watermelon’s for a reason, green on the outside and red in the middle, the problem is what ever goes red ends up dead.

Phil Scott, the Teal candidate in the NT, speaks in polished platitudes: “data-driven reform,” “sustainable outcomes,” and “inclusive delivery models.” His policies appeal to inner-city professionals but are blind to the realities of Katherine or the Barkly. He proposes digital health solutions and federal innovation grants but offers no strategy for recruiting and retaining actual doctors in actual clinics. Teal healthcare is a spreadsheet, not a system. It’s policy by advisory board, where the patient is often secondary to the PR campaign. The advent of AI has emboldened their ability to use rhetoric in much more captivating ways, but with ironically very inhumane results. His approach mirrors a 2020 NT telehealth pilot that reduced specialist wait times by 25% for remote patients. But telehealth can’t replace in-person care for complex cases, and Scott’s reliance on federal funding invites greater delays, past NT independents have seen promised funds to vanish when Canberra’s priorities shift. Maybe a call to Gerry Wood might be in order.

One Nation’s platform is unvarnished. To decentralise health, give local communities direct control, remove ideological filters from hiring and service delivery, and restore competition to a system that’s been monopolised by Canberra and its subsidiaries.

Critics accuse them of being simplistic, but simplicity has value when systems become so complex they no longer function. Their call to allow private providers to operate alongside public services in remote communities, while controversial, speaks to a basic truth, monopoly breeds mediocrity. The health system in the NT is well below mediocre.

They also highlight an uncomfortable fact, the sheer amount of healthcare funding that disappears into NGOs, "consultation groups," and multi-agency frameworks without producing any improvement in health outcomes. That money isn’t healing people, it’s employing middle managers. Phil Scott would know all about that.

They also push for immigration cuts to reduce demand on services. However, a 1990s immigration reduction didn’t ease healthcare strain, it cut hospital staff recruitment by 7%, lengthening waits. This show that they need a little more nuance in their policies, as restrictive immigration based on occupational need may be a more pragmatic choice.

Federal healthcare funding may be a forced necessity, but it is nowhere near sufficient. More money into the same flawed delivery mechanisms will only deepen the problem. Government intervention in healthcare, while well-intentioned, often erodes competition and drives up costs. In 2011, Labor’s delay on new drug listings saved short-term funds but deferred access to treatments, increasing hospital costs by 6% as patients worsened. Data shows NT healthcare costs rose 10% faster than the national average from 2020 to 2024, partly due to overreliance on public funding, which discourages private investment. Competition, not control, spurs efficiency, private telehealth firms in 2022 cut NT wait times by 30% where allowed to operate freely. The NT’s healthcare gaps demand more than money, they need ingenuity and accountsability. Federal funding can build clinics, but without competition, costs soar and quality lags. Training local workers, expanding telehealth, and incentivising specialists to stay in the Outback could help, but only if government steps back and lets markets breathe. Territorians can’t afford to keep waiting. What the NT needs is accountability, local autonomy, and a market-based system where results, not intentions, are rewarded.

• Fund outcomes, not offices.

• Cut red tape for rural medical entrepreneurs.

• Allow communities to contract their own care providers.

• Let Indigenous health be driven by results, not virtue-signalling.

• And above all, restore competition to a system smothered by monopolistic “compassion.”
  

Because the real diagnosis of healthcare in the NT is this, too much government, not enough medicine. Democide has killed more people on the planet than every war and religious conflict combined, the bureaucratic bulge uses the same evil pattern, it promises benevolence and imposes malevolence, and people always die.

From the author.

The opinions and statements are those of Sam Wilks and do not necessarily represent whom Sam Consults or contracts to. Sam Wilks is a skilled and experienced Security and Risk Consultant with 3 decades of expertise in the fields of Real estate, Security, and the hospitality/gaming industry. Sam has trained over 1,000 entry level security personnel, taught defensive tactics, weapons training and handcuffs to policing personnel and the public. His knowledge and practical experience have made him a valuable asset to many organisations looking to enhance their security measures and provide a safe and secure environment for their clients and staff.