Louise Markus (Greenway, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Hawkesbury and Blue Mountains region is a great place to live, work, raise a family and retire. It is surrounded by a picturesque World Heritage listed national park and stunning river systems including the Hawkesbury-Nepean river. Protecting the way of life which we all enjoy is absolutely critical to the ongoing sustainability of our region. It is important to keep debt and inflation down in order to ease the burden of interest rates, particularly for families and small businesses. This is essential to continued growth in our local economy. Securing the future for our young people by developing and delivering programs that provide them with opportunities to build for the future is a key priority.

In recent years I have been running an annual youth leadership forum and this year will see the inaugural Macquarie Youth Leadership Forum, named after and in honour of Lachlan Macquarie. This year is the 200th anniversary of his appointment as Governor of New South Wales. The forum is dedicated to developing future leaders through practical exposure to core leadership values such as service to others, integrity and courage. It is critical that the community invests in today’s youth. The forum provides an opportunity for students to begin asking themselves questions about their life, their future and the manner in which they will conduct themselves, inspiring them to reach their fullest potential. The forum has a great program, featuring speakers from all walks of life. On the final Saturday a community project that responds to the needs of the local community will be conducted. These young people often do not want to leave on the Saturday night when their parents are waiting for them.

Currently, whenever I am out and about people raise with me their concerns about the safety of our roads, easier access to general and specialist health care and community safety. I will be fighting to increase safety on our local roads across the Hawkesbury and the Blue Mountains—roads such as Freemans Reach Road, Comleroy Road, Terrace Road at North Richmond, Jennings Road in Faulconbridge, The Avenue in Valley Heights and the Bells Line of Road, to name a few. Working towards decreasing the amount of freight on our roads is vitally important to local road safety. While we need to make roads safer, there is a need for a long-term plan. We cannot afford to make rash decisions with policy on the run, as the Labor government so often does, because we cannot afford to get safety wrong. Community safety is also a key concern. CCTV cameras would be of great assistance in the fight to improve community safety, particularly around our parks and public places.

I will also be fighting for better access to specialist and preventative healthcare services. Six-year-old Brianna Ashcroft and others like her have this year found themselves without access to the specialist services of a juvenile endocrinologist. The Nepean Hospital’s specialist took maternity leave but was not replaced. While specialists are available at Westmead Hospital, families have been told they cannot access them due to local health catchment area rules. Whilst receiving wonderful care from the staff at the Nepean, these families still have no access to a specialist—this is unacceptable in the 21st century. I call on the New South Wales government to return a juvenile endocrinologist to the Nepean Hospital. Access for women in our region to breast-screening services has also been removed in the past year. Funding for mobile screening vans was quietly axed in September 2009 and local women are only now realising they must organise to travel for a mammogram. One in nine New South Wales women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime. I have launched a petition calling on Labor governments to return mobile breast-screening units to New South Wales.

In addition to these many health concerns it slipped out late yesterday that the national funding authority for Mr Rudd’s grand hospital plan is to be abolished before it has even been created. The national funding authority was to provide transparency and accountability so that federal funding and taxpayer dollars would not be diverted by the states or misused, as they have been by so many states, with federal programs such as Building the Education Revolution. The states must be held accountable for the money they spend. We cannot afford to have Labor governments keep throwing good money after bad. We need real action on these local issues. The Rudd Labor government has wasted millions of dollars on local school hall rip-offs, money which could have been better spent on tackling local crime or filling potholes in our local roads. The Rudd Labor government has promised much but delivered little, failing our community. People shake their heads at the long list of broken promises and all the waste. The Hawkesbury and the Blue Mountains are struggling to cope now. What they need is investment in health, investment in roads, investment in their community safety. (Time expired)