Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Lingiari for her insightful words. She, as much as anybody, would know how difficult it is for women, particularly for Aboriginal women, in her sprawling Northern Territory electorate to give birth. Having a baby can be very stressful for mothers, and I commend the member for Wide Bay for bringing this motion to this House. It notes 'the reduction in the provision of maternity services in rural Australia', and that is so very much so, unfortunately.

Within the current Riverina electorate boundaries, five towns are of a size where you would think there would be good and modern maternity services, but there are none at all. This forces expectant mothers to, in some cases, drive hours upon hours to get to a hospital, and in this day and age that is simply not good enough. Parkes, West Wyalong, Junee, Gundagai and Harden-Murrumburrah have no maternity services. The Parkes maternity ward closed in June 2019 due to a lack of doctors. The mayor in Parkes, Neil Westcott, bemoaned to me only the other day that, for a town the size of 12,000 people, they deserve better.

The Cootamundra community was told just last month that maternity services will be off the table under proposed changes under the Murrumbidgee Local Health District's draft health services plan for the Cootamundra health service. This was on public display until yesterday. I've spoken to the Cootamundra-Gundagai mayor, Councillor Charlie Sheahan, who actually ran for state Labor. He shares his community's extreme concerns—and they're mine as well; I share those views—that the draft will become the plan and will leave his community, the Cootamundra community, devastated. He's right, and it's simply not good enough. No country town should have any health services reduced, let alone a town the size of Cootamundra. It has 7,153 people, and they deserve better. It's got an encouraging projected population growth on the back of projects such as the planned expansion of the local meatworks, and, as Councillor Sheahan said to me, this could attract thousands more residents to the district. Why should people living in rural and regional areas have fewer and inferior services to Australians living in metropolitan areas? There's no right or proper answer to that question. They simply should not.

I've written to the Assistant Minister for Rural and Regional Health and, whilst I appreciate that this is very much at the feet of the Minns state government, I felt compelled to raise this issue with Minister McBride to impress upon her the importance of, at the very least, maintaining health services in regional and rural areas, because that is her portfolio.

Now, the Cootamundra community has been told that pathology, maternity and surgery are not going to happen any longer under these proposed changes, and it's simply not good enough. I can't express that enough. I really criticise the Minns government for doing this at a time when Cootamundra's projected population is growing. The Daily Advertiser newspaper on 21 May, under the heading '"Short-sighted" plan leaves community uneasy over hospital's future', talked about fears of vital local health care having cuts spreading across the community. The article said:

A MLHD spokesperson said a health service plan outlines the services required to reflect the community's health needs into the future and makes recommendations about the best way to deliver these services.

That's great, but come on. Let's face it: these communities are growing. All the LGAs in my area are growing, and yet, if it truly reflects the community's health needs, why take it away? Why cut it? It makes no sense.

The Spokesperson said the Murrumbidgee Local Health District, like other health districts, regularly updates its health service plans to ensure they accurately reflect the health needs of individual communities. It does not accurately reflect the health needs of the community when you've got a growing community with mums who want to give birth in their home towns but are forced to drive hours away to give birth in Wagga Wagga or elsewhere. It's simply not good enough, and these bureaucrats should pull their bloody heads in and realise that this community needs maternity services. They need them now and they need them going into the future.

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