Thursday, 14 November 2019

 Ms CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (18:32): My adjournment matter this evening is for the attention of the Minister for Health. In June of this year I visited the West Gippsland Hospital with the member for Narracan, Gary Blackwood. Mr Blackwood has been a fierce advocate for his community and he knows, just as the community knows, the disregard the Andrews Labor government has for rural and regional Victoria. The neglect to provide proper funding for the West Gippsland Hospital by this government is emblematic of how rural and regional Victorians are being treated by Daniel Andrews with his city-centric focus. This has been evident with the shutting down of the logging industry, which also affects large parts of Mr Blackwood’s electorate. He knows only too well the ongoing impacts of that decision, made with the stroke of a pen, and what it will do to his community.

Similar is the disregard for the local hospital and healthcare needs of his community. Mr Blackwood has been asking for months and months and months for the release of the business case and feasibility study and yet his request continues to fall on deaf ears—or should I say, it is arrogantly being dismissed by the minister. The secrecy shrouding this business case and feasibility study is just one more example in a long list of decisions and data that the minister and the Andrews Labor government refuse to release.

The hospital is having a patchwork fix-up job done on it. When I say ‘patchwork’, I mean patchwork. The hospital is situated on a hill with a steep incline so for the elderly and incapacitated access is dangerous and limited. There are contaminants in parts of the building, and doctors and nurses are working in cramped areas. So as much as the minister might want to come in here and spin and spruik the Regional Health Infrastructure Fund, if she was truly serious, then she would release the business case and feasibility study so the community could know and understand exactly the intentions of the government. The action I am therefore seeking is that the minister not ignore this request, as she has repeatedly done on numerous occasions when it has come from Mr Blackwood and others, and release both the business case and feasibility study in the interests of the West Gippsland community.