The Australian government is providing $27.8 million over the next three years towards the construction of the new school, which will allow postgraduate medical students from the Northern Territories to avoid needing to relocate to Adelaide to complete the first two years of their degrees. Aspiring doctors from the Northern Territories will soon be able to study all four years of the course closer to home.

Speaking in Darwin on Friday, Warren Snowdon (Federal Minister for Indigenous, Rural and Regional Health) said:

“If we can (give people greater control of their local hospitals) and along with looking at addressing workforce issues and primary care issues, we will make a significant improvement to the health care of all Australians, but particularly those people in the Northern Territory.

When students train remotely, wherever it is, they’ve had a very good experience as a student and they generally go back and perform better than their city counterparts in the examination context and more and more of them are coming to work in the bush.”

Government officials expect the school to educate around 40 medical students per year, with the first graduates entering the workforce in 2015.

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