Albury Wodonga Health
Mr TILLEY (Benambra) (09:54): In this house we are constantly suffering through Labor gaslighting our hardworking medical staff and services. Well, as we say on this side, look at what they do and not what they say. The most pressing issue for Albury Wodonga Health, the public hospital that straddles both New South Wales and Victoria, is for a major funding injection to meet that demand. We have a catchment of about 300 000 people. We have an emergency department presentation that is in excess of all bar Geelong in regional Victoria, and the two campuses of Albury Wodonga Health are groaning under that pressure. We were promised a master plan in September last year. That became December, and then we were told this document was in the sole possession of the Victorian Minister for Health and he would provide it at his leisure. He needs to read the room. The minister now has a letter signed by border medicos that says the current hospital situation is dangerous and poses a significant clinical risk.
This is not a political game. These are people’s lives. Labor’s reluctance to fund any meaningful capital works at Albury Wodonga Health should be an embarrassment to the current Victorian Premier, one of the significant signatories on the document that created this important single health service in regional Victoria and southern New South Wales. This government needs to release the master plan now and make whatever preparation it needs to fund the new hospital.