Wednesday, 8 March 2023

Rosebud Hospital

Sam GROTH (Nepean) (19:17): (89) My matter is for the Minister for Health, pertaining to the lack of funding and attention this government has given to Rosebud Hospital. Rosebud Hospital remains in a state of critical underfunding with dated infrastructure, obsolete equipment and daily struggles to service residents in need of life-saving treatment. I have witnessed firsthand just how wonderful the staff are. They are compassionate and they do a fantastic job at the hospital, but they are forced to endure working conditions well below the standard that a first-world economy should expect. They deserve a modern, world-class facility as their workplace to ensure they are as safe and as effective as they possibly can be also.

Providing gold-standard health facilities should be a team effort shared by the government, local staff and the wider community, but sadly in the case of Rosebud Hospital, the government has left the peninsula to fend for itself without the support we deserve. Victoria is a place where locals, especially our older residents and younger families, can enjoy their community without the fear that health care may be too far away in an emergency. I want to put this in terms that those the other side of the house may understand: for the people on the peninsula that would be like living in the seat of Pakenham and having to drive to the Maroondah Hospital in the seat of Ringwood to access a public hospital. And again, they want to keep us as part of metropolitan Melbourne. Well, even before I got to this place, calls for Labor’s health minister to visit Rosebud Hospital were repeatedly ignored, even from the now former Labor member for Nepean when he requested that of his colleagues. Not one of the four health ministers we saw in the last term of government made the long one-and-a-bit hour trip down to Rosebud. Indeed while my community suffers the effects of health care underfunding and Labor’s blind eye to the peninsula, the minister has failed to even direct her government-funded car in our direction.

My community deserves a fair go. All Victorians matter, and those on the peninsula should be afforded the opportunity to show the minister how her blindness to healthcare needs in my region has impacted our community. The action I seek is that the Minister for Health arrange an official visit to Rosebud Hospital, tour the facilities and hear from locals firsthand about the facility, which is in such desperate need of funding and improvement. If this government is truly committed to doing what matters, then I assume the minister should have no hesitation in accommodating this.