Boozed up groups surrounding Cairns Hospital linked to record spend on Patient Travel Subsidy Scheme
A $35m spend on a FIFO health initiative intended to improve outcomes for remote patients is delivering unintended harm as Cairns Hospital clients slip into homelessness and alcohol misuse.
Record investment in supporting remote patients into centralised healthcare has been linked to an escalating numbers of boozed-up groups on the streets of Cairns amid calls for reform of Cape York Alcohol Management Plans.
According to data obtained by the Cairns Post there’s been a 31.32 per cent increase in Patient Travel Subsidy Scheme expenditure in the past two years.
During the 2022-2023 financial year 7,827 Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Service patients accessed the scheme at a cost of $7.9m while in the same period $18.6m was spent by the Torres and Cape Hospital and Health Service to support 8,854 patients into healthcare.
In 2024-2025 the patient number jumped to 8,803 at a cost of $9.2m for the Cairns-based health service while the Torres and Cape service shelled out $25.6m for travel of 9,350 patients in a 37 per cent increase on the 2022-2023 spend on commercial travel bookings.
The central purpose of the Patient Travel Subsidy scheme is to deliver specialist medical treatment for Queenslanders wherever they live by offering financial support to patients who don’t have specialist medical services in the towns they live.
According to Queensland Health the scheme is driven by clinical need rather than funding availability.
“In 2025-26, the Queensland Government is delivering a record $123.4m for the PTSS to support those who are required to travel for their health care,” a spokeswoman said.
Arriving from Cape York and Gulf communities many patients struggle to navigate accommodation needs alongside medical appointments while having to self-fund taxis, airport transfers and meal costs which are not covered by the scheme.
STRUGGLE TO RETURN HOME
Predominantly arriving from dry communities with Alcohol Management Plans in place patients are often sidetracked by cheap and readily available grog which can lead to missed medical appointments, flights home and entanglement in the justice system that then makes patients ineligible for subsidised airfares under the Return to Country program.
The number of Cape York residents taking up low cost airfares home under the Return to Country scheme has declined significantly since it was first offered in 2012 and midway through this year just one person had been transported back to their community compared with the 71 people repatriated through the scheme in 2023.
North Queensland Land Council Cairns director Warren Martens believed a dwindling uptake of the scheme was in-part due to a lack of services in the bush.
“The reason why people don’t go back is there are no services for them to go back to,” he said.
The Cairns-based Gunggandji leader said the whole framework set up to manage the wellbeing of Aboriginal people from the bush needed an overhaul.
“There is no system to navigate and track the people they bring down and the physician sees them and then they get let out (of the hospital) who tracks them to see if they go back,” he said.
“I think we have a system that does not give a f**k about aboriginal people, I have had it said to me if you are Aboriginal ‘just go away and die’.
“The issue is they are drinking themselves to poor health and prohibition has not worked and I think there needs to be a review on that.
“By mob coming down here and living in homelessness it’s putting pressure on all the services in Cairns.
“You are seeing patterns of people that are clustering with all these social issues that’s slipping out into the mainstream community.
“What I think needs to happen is the Crisafulli Government needs to come together with the Commonwealth to form a social agency to make bureaucrats accountable.
“It’s not working anymore, it’s a done model.
“These people are spiralling out of control and the government has to step in.”
IMPACT ON RESIDENTS AND BUSINESS
Julie Robbins working at an office on McLeod St has seen first-hand the impact of Cairns Hospital patients “spiralling out of control.”
“It’s ridiculous what is going on here, I’d hate to live here, it’s completely out of hand,” she said.
“They come from the hospital and go straight to the booze shop and they sit there on the footpath and have a merry time.
“One of them had kicked in the fence panel and decided to have a sleep in the garden, anytime of the day you will hear screaming.
“They are just drinking themselves to death.
“This is definitely a government problem, they have created a monster and they don’t know how to fix it, it needs to be addressed but it’s not being addressed.”
ON-COUNTRY HEALTH SERVICES
Mapoon-based advocate Jack Wilkie-Jans Mapoon has long been a critic of Alcohol Management Plans championed by Cape York leader Noel Pearson who argues prohibition at many Cape towns is necessary to reduce harm.
But Wilkie-Jans claims booze restrictions are overly punitive and racially problematic which don’t address deeper social and economic issues.
While applauding investment in attempts to improve health outcomes for Cape York Indigenous people through the patient travel scheme he believed people coming from dry communities to Cairns was contributing to the city’s social problems.
“It’s good Queensland Health continues to invest in patient travel which is supported, but some of the latest statistics shows a phenomenal amount of money which could be better directed–or at least matched–into on-country health services, such as alcohol diversion and rehabilitation programmes and centres, if they’re going to mainrain Alcohol Management Plans,” he said.” he said.
“It’s almost negligent that they aren’t directing funds there and still encouraging people to come down knowing what distractions there are for them.”
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Originally published as Boozed up groups surrounding Cairns Hospital linked to record spend on Patient Travel Subsidy Scheme
