Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Heidi Maree Clarke-Lewis was a young woman with her whole life ahead of her when she entered Wagga Wagga Base Hospital on the evening of Thursday, 30 April 2009. Only six months earlier, on 18 October 2008, Heidi had married the love of her life, Steve Lewis. Heidi and Steve were happily married and were starting to plan a family. Heidi, who hailed from Narrandera, had a successful career as the media officer for Wagga Wagga City Council and a very happy and bright future ahead of her.

Heidi presented in the emergency department with severe abdominal pain that Thursday night and was diagnosed with an ectopic pregnancy and booked for laparoscopic surgery, a fairly routine procedure. Tragically, Heidi died on the operating table that same night. After nearly two long years, in April this year the coronial inquest over Heidi's death was held. Three official recommendations were made by the Deputy State Coroner, Hugh Dillon: (1) that the New South Wales Minister for Health undertake a study of the costs and benefits of digitally recording surgery, (2) that the Murrumbidgee Local Health Network consider emergency checklists and (3) that the Murrumbidgee Local Health Network review its on-call procedures.

Mr Dillon's closing remarks were particularly poignant. He told Heidi Clarke-Lewis's family that her life had not been a waste and that her death added weight to the demand for more regional health funding. I agree 100 per cent with Mr Dillon's remarks and so too does Heidi's grieving family. As Heidi's sister Mrs Kathy Langley read in her statement to the inquest:

We may have one of the best health systems in the world, but we are still nowhere near good enough while lives are being lost so carelessly throughout the hospital system. Surely the expectation to receive decent professional medical treatment in this country is a right and not a privilege.

Mrs Langley is correct. Medical treatment in Australia is a right, not a privilege. Why then is there such a line drawn between city dwellers and regional Australians? You should not have to live in metropolitan areas to receive top level health care and have top level health facilities. However, a line has been drawn—a line which sees that for every Medicare dollar spent on a city dweller, only 51c is spent on their regional compatriots. This is unacceptable. Every Australian deserves to have the same amount spent.

Wagga Wagga Base Hospital services upwards of a quarter of a million people right across the Riverina and South West Slopes. For many this is their lifeline in a crisis. In the country you do not have a choice. You have to use the facilities available. As Mrs Langley quite rightly told the inquest, a new hospital would encourage more qualified staff. Again today I acknowledge the former and present New South Wales governments and the federal government for the contributions they have made towards a new, long overdue Wagga Wagga Base Hospital. But more funding is needed to ensure the complete rebuild of the current dilapidated hospital. This is a project the people of the Riverina have waited for, and waited and waited. They are tired of waiting and they are tired of inadequate facilities.

I have written to the New South Wales health minister and the federal health minister stating the full details of Heidi's case. Heidi was a real person, not a statistic, not merely a number on a medical list kept by health bureaucrats. She was a warm, caring, healthy, happy person who always thought of others first, who had everything to live for. Her death at age 29 was tragically unfortunate and totally unnecessary. I trust that by highlighting the issues the Wagga Wagga Base Hospital faces, and the concerns of Mrs Clarke-Lewis's family and indeed those of the Deputy State Coroner, Wagga Wagga will receive facilities at least equal to those of most other communities in Australia. The constituents of Riverina deserve nothing less. We must ensure we learn from the loss of the young, beautiful and loving Heidi so that her death was not in vain.