Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tomorrow, a busload of cancer patients, cancer carers and allied cancer workers from southern New South Wales and north-east Victoria will travel to Canberra to present a petition of about 17,000 signatures—17,000 signatures from people who were extremely disappointed that Albury-Wodonga was excluded from the centres provided with the funding under the rural and regional cancer centre program which Minister Roxon announced earlier this year.

These signatures are from people who are personally affected by this decision. They have mothers, fathers, children or friends who have been impacted by cancer. In fact, it is impossible in Albury-Wodonga not to know someone who is having, or has had, some form of treatment for cancer—or someone who has passed away from cancer. I know many, and, unfortunately, so do my children. I do not remember knowing anyone with cancer when I was their age. Times have changed, and now we do have a better rate of success in diagnosing and treating this disease, but we must change our thinking to ensure that rural and regional areas are known for providing first-class, accessible health services.

This program seemed to present us with an opportunity to provide those first-class services in the way that local cancer professionals considered the most appropriate. We have the people willing to work with the government to provide the services, but at this stage we have no commitment from Mr Rudd, Minister Roxon or anyone in the Rudd government to support them in return. There is no support either from the New South Wales or Victorian state governments. In fact, they cannot seem to work out who should be looking after the health of those on the border. New South Wales did not provide funding in the budget because they said it was Victoria’s responsibility. The Victorian Premier, John Brumby, is now encouraging people to move to regional Victoria, but the state government did not support the funding for the infrastructure to care for those people—how ironic is that?

I am told that in the Albury-Wodonga region about 1,400 new cases of cancer are diagnosed each year. Many of those people have to travel hundreds of kilometres for surgery, diagnosis and follow-up treatment. We are lucky to have private radiography facilities and also a private, and a very tightly-stretched public, chemotherapy service. But this is certainly not enough.

I will do my best to draw you a picture of what a cancer sufferer in Albury-Wodonga goes through. Imagine, if you can, that you are the mother of two young children. You have not been able to work for a while because you have not felt well, but everyone has told you it is stress related. Imagine how you feel when, after presenting yourself to the emergency department and being admitted to hospital, they tell you they found a brain tumour and you have to immediately fly hundreds of kilometres to a hospital in Melbourne because that is the only place that has the technology and the personnel to accurately locate and diagnose your tumour.

Then, there you are in Melbourne, hundreds of kilometres away from your primary-school-aged children, your husband, your parents and your friends. You are in a large public hospital with overworked staff, and you are told you should get your affairs in order prior to going into surgery. You cannot have surgery close to home, because there is no facility. Your husband cannot leave the children and you have no-one to talk to, other than the patient in the bed next door, who tells you they have just had their second similar operation and the prognosis was poor.

Luckily, you come out of surgery and then, after very little time, the hospital deems you well enough to go home. They do this quickly because they need the bed. After you are deemed well enough to leave hospital, you have to drive the hundreds of kilometres back to your home. No-one from the hospital in that strange city will drive you home. You certainly cannot afford a taxi, and you cannot fly after the operation. Your parents are too old to drive to Melbourne and back, and you are too embarrassed to ask your friends to come all that way. You have to either get a train or drive home—hours away. You have no hair; it has not grown back after the operation. You are obviously still not back to precancer fitness and probably never will be. You do not feel up to driving, but there is no other way. It is a four-hour trip. But it does not stop when you get home. You have to have regular blood tests, chemotherapy and radiation, and doctor’s visits—some in Albury, some in Wodonga and some in Melbourne, but all in different locations. You are not supposed to drive but you have to drive to those appointments because there is no or very little public transport.

That is just one person—hundreds of people from our region go through similar circumstances every year. We must do what we can to make their lives easier. They deserve it, and our region deserves to be able to provide these people with the best care and support it can. We have the professionals, we have the commitment, we have the community and we definitely have the need. We are vibrant and self-sufficient, and we really ask for very little from the government.

Minister Roxon gave away funding to an area which did not even meet the criteria of a rural or regional hospital when she approved funding for Gosford-Wyong. She bent the rules. She moved the goalposts. She treated people in real regional areas with real need for this funding with contempt when she made the decision to travel up and down the country announcing funding in marginal areas, even when they were not regional. In the manner which has, unfortunately, been typical of this government, they made the rules up as they went along. They promised regional Australia help and they did not come up with the goods.