Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have no problem today standing up and debating this matter of public importance, because I can tell you that in my part of Australia the issue of health supersedes any other. It is the issue that my office deals with on a daily basis. I acknowledge that the health minister is aware of what is happening in my electorate, and I acknowledge that I have had some meetings with her. But make no mistake about it, this debate today is about trust—the trust created last year when the Prime Minister, then the Leader of the Opposition, said, ‘When it comes to health, the buck stops with me.’ All across Australia people voted for the Labor government because the then opposition leader promised that he was going to fix health. Thankfully not too many people in my electorate followed that line, but right across Australia many people did. The situation since that time has deteriorated rapidly.

In my electorate, the Dubbo Base Hospital is $16 million in debt. The Greater Western Area Health Service is in a state of terminal collapse. Base hospitals at Orange and Bathurst and countless small bush hospitals are in dire straits. My colleague, the Leader of the Nationals, the member for Wide Bay, in question time today mentioned the fact that the staff of Dubbo Base Hospital are purchasing supplies from the vet and the local chemist shop. Indeed, a surgeon at Dubbo hospital, when needing a particular piece of equipment to undertake an operation and finding out that credit had been cut off from the supplier, cleared Greater Western Area Health Service’s bill with his own credit card so that he could purchase the equipment needed to undertake that particular operation. In the hospitals in the towns of Gilgandra and Coonabarabran patients are no longer fed meat because the butcher has not been paid. In this day and age, this is a terrible state of affairs.

I would like acknowledge that tomorrow is national Diabetes Day and that we still have members from Diabetes Australia up here. I am looking forward to the function at the hotel tonight to recognise this special day. But, in contrast, this week air services are being pulled out of four towns in my electorate. One of those towns is Walgett. On Tuesday I had Ms Christine Corby, who is the CEO of the Walgett medical service, in my office quite distressed. I hear you ask: what does the withdrawal of airline services have to do with health? It is quite simple: these remote towns are serviced by fly-in practitioners—specialists, heart specialists, dentists, oncologists and specialists who deal with diabetes. The other thing that happened this week was that the diabetes map for Australia was released. Guess whose electorate has a high level of diabetes. And guess which town in my electorate is the worst. It is Walgett, which has a large Aboriginal population.

When we were in this House early in the term of this government debating the merits of sitting on Fridays, the Prime Minister went to my electorate. I might say this was without my knowledge, but I guess I will come to terms with that. He visited the Walgett Aboriginal Medical Service and he spoke with these people; he recognised and understood, quite rightly, the great work they are doing. The withdrawal of the en route subsidy, which means that $6 million has been taken out of these routes, has made these services unviable, so policies of this government are affecting the health of people in western New South Wales.

There has been talk about solutions. The minister mentioned the GP superclinics. There was quite a bit of mirth on the other side as people acknowledged the fact that they had this wonderful largess come their way in the form of a GP superclinic. A town in my electorate, Gunnedah, has the ultimate GP superclinic. If a GP superclinic is a stock standard Commodore, the people of Gunnedah have come up with a Statesman DeVille—the top of the range. Not only does it fit the complete criteria of the GP superclinic model to a T, it has an added bonus—that is, the training side of it. It is a partnership between the doctors, the local community, the state government and universities. As well, local industry is putting in personal private money to fund this clinic. Unfortunately, there are no funds left. The bucket for GP superclinics is empty. And in some cases they have gone to marginal seats where they do not really want them. The local GPs are saying, ‘We’re going to be overrun with doctors; we don’t really want the clinic.’ That is why there has been a slow take-up.

The people of Gunnedah, a town of 12,000, are serviced by three doctors. Can you imagine waiting for six weeks to see your GP? How does a young woman going through a pregnancy have a relationship with her doctor when there are three doctors to service 12,000 people? Indeed, in the true tradition of people in country areas, they are trying to get this job going on their own. A group of young mums in Gunnedah are fundraising for facilities for the local maternity room because the funding is so short. So in this day and age a progressive and growing town like Gunnedah, a town with 12,000 people and a large agriculture and mining base, is now having to fundraise for equipment for the local maternity wing. They have a solution by way of the Gunnedah medical centre which, anywhere it has been shown, has got rave reviews, but unfortunately the bucket of money is gone and people are squabbling over their GP superclinics because the local doctors are saying that there is going to be overcrowding of doctors.

The other case in point is in the town of Dubbo, Lourdes Hospital. Lourdes Hospital is in a state of disrepair. It is owned and run by Catholic Healthcare under an arrangement with the New South Wales government. Catholic Healthcare were prepared to put up a large amount of money, demolish the Lourdes Hospital and reconstruct a new hospital. They required a co-contribution from the New South Wales government. I cannot understand why any government, especially a cash-strapped one like New South Wales, would look a gift horse in the mouth and not take up that offer, but it appears that Lourdes Hospital has become a victim of the mini-budget last week.

Lourdes Hospital is a rehabilitation hospital. It does not just service the 40,000-odd people in Dubbo; it services an area with 200,000 people. People have to travel for five or eight hours for medical services. I know some people in this place have trouble coming to terms with the fact that they have to travel those long distances. My family were quite fortunate. My son, who is now 19, was one of the last children born in the Warialda Hospital. Now the young mums have to cross their legs for 200 kilometres and their partners have to break all traffic rules to get them to Tamworth on time. The ability to have children in rural Australia has been taken away. Even the base hospitals are now struggling.

There have been many speeches saying that there was nothing from the previous government. I can tell you why the people supported me in the last election with regard to health. It was because of the promise to return the management of health back to the local areas. We have these huge area health services. In Baradine, which is a town that has 500 people, they have built their own doctor’s surgery and they have just purchased, with their own money, a house for him to live in. But they are at the beck and call of a bureaucrat who lives in Bathurst, 600 or 700 kilometres away.

What New South Wales have done with the health service is depoliticise it. I do not mean that they have party-politicised it. I mean that the local chairman of the health board and the local mayor cannot go down and knock on the health minister’s door and say, ‘We need a physiotherapist,’ ‘We need a speech pathologist,’ or, ‘We need an oncologist that is going to come once a month.’ They cannot do that because the person who is in charge of these hospitals now is a bureaucrat. They are part of a chain. Their voice has been taken away.

I have been having meetings in my office in Dubbo with nurses and doctors from the Dubbo Base Hospital. They come in almost under the cover of darkness, terrified that someone in the health service will know they have been talking to me, their federal member. The health minister has seen the faxes. (Time expired)

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