Thursday, 29 August 2024

Maternity services

Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (18:16): (1113) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Health. I have raised in this chamber before the issue of the closing down of maternity services at the Camperdown Hospital, and I was very pleased to see, after a degree of community engagement, that South West Healthcare has said that they will be reopened soon. I now have texts from mothers who have not been given any assurance that this service is going to resume any time soon. They are desperate to know when they are going to get their obstetric services back on track. They value them highly – the whole community in Camperdown does. As it happened, the medical practitioners, the midwives, the hospital and the nurses – nobody was informed that this service was going to be closed down. They did it at the stroke of a pen, and they said it was under review and so on. They never consulted the medical practitioners as to their point of view on the whole matter. But anyway they did say it was going to resume soon.

Georgie Crozier: The minister says ‘rubbish’, and I’m not sure that she’s correct on that, Mrs McArthur.

Bev McARTHUR: The minister says ‘rubbish’? Well, that is unfortunate, because I have got texts from mothers who are desperate to know what is going to happen to their obstetric services. Do they go to Warrnambool? Do they go to Colac? Do they not have them any longer? Some of them cannot travel to that extent – it is at least an hour everywhere. If these services are not resuming, these mothers need to know. It is a medical issue. If South West Healthcare gave them an assurance that they were going to have their services resumed, they need to give them an exact date. ‘Soon’ is clearly not cutting it. It is over a week from when they said the services were going to resume, and they have not resumed. These mothers are desperate. These families are desperate. The Minister for Health needs to intervene immediately so that we can find out and assure these pregnant women exactly when they are going to get their services in Camperdown.