Emma Husar (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

You have to spend an extra 15 hours per week travelling to your job, which is located miles from your home. Your schools have had their funding cut by $23 million, and your residents are now paying for a toll on an already-built road. The university that supports students in the lowest socio-economic postcodes has had its funding slashed, and your apprenticeship rates have dropped by 37 per cent. And now you're facing the prospect of a 24/7 airport in your community. It's of no surprise to anybody with any common sense to know that this will absolutely affect the health of your community.

I have been in this place now for 12 months, and I have come to realise that common sense is actually not that common. Western Sydney has all of these issues. We have the highest death rate from cardiovascular disease and diabetes related diseases. Potentially avoidable deaths for women in Western Sydney are the highest, and they are the second highest for men. When you couple preventable disease with a stretched and underfunded health system, you have a crisis. We have a health crisis in Western Sydney on our hands right now.

Nepean Hospital is the hospital most under pressure in the state. Presentations in this flu season have risen by 266 per cent. Last week I saw with my own eyes the pressure, with two of my own three children needing to use the emergency department. In the last month, I've visited there as a friend and now as a mother and have seen how difficult and stressful accessing services through the Nepean Hospital emergency department really is. And the horror stories every week from constituents about the hospital, which continually line my inbox, are absolutely disturbing. I feel incredibly sorry for the hardworking staff, the nurses and the doctors, who are working under incredible amounts of pressure, but you cannot do more with less. This is a constant ask from the staff at that hospital.

So it is galling—it is absolutely galling—to read former Premier Baird, the man who successfully privatised himself and most of the public assets, still being proudly quoted on the department's website as a former minister stating:

The population of Western Sydney is due to rise significantly—

well, he got that right—

in the next 20 years and our major investment will ensure we meet the healthcare needs of the region.

The New South Wales Department of Health has the bold announcement:

There is a hospital building boom … across NSW …

Well, I have news for those opposite: you are not meeting the healthcare needs of the region now, and I see no plan to meet future demand.

I checked in detail, and we do have a boom all right—in car park development for hospitals in Western Sydney. Let me make it very, very clear: we don't need another car park; we need beds and clinical funding urgently—and I stress clinical funding. Current funding goes nowhere near addressing our current needs, and there is no consideration for future capacity requirements whatsoever. When you consider that the majority of the population will live west of Parramatta in the next generation, I absolutely despair.

Just look at the expenditure for east of Parramatta—and I note that the member opposite is from that area and is looking at me and rolling his eyes considerably because he doesn't believe in funding health care in Western Sydney. There is $720 million for the Prince of Wales Hospital, $200 million for Hornsby hospital, and a $2.1 billion sop to the Northern Beaches with a new hospital that was only meant to cost a billion dollars. For the best economic managers in the country, they absolutely certainly take the—out of us.

Honourable members interjecting—

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