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

I rise today to speak once again about Nepean Hospital and the urgent need for this government and the New South Wales Liberal government to commit to the desperately needed stage 4 hospital upgrade. This is an upgrade that is beyond overdue and will address the staggeringly-high wait times that people in my community are forced to endure for emergency care and elective surgery.

I have spoken many times before about the incredibly qualified and dedicated doctors, nurses and allied health staff who are being let down by Liberal governments who refuse to act. This is on top of shocking stories I hear every day about patients waiting up to 18 hours in the emergency department to be seen, with chronic understaffing and the lack of beds and rooms leading to excruciating wait times for sick and injured patients.

I recently heard from a local elderly couple about their recent experience with the hospital. The husband was advised by his surgeon to attend the emergency department following complications in the recovery stage of a surgery just two days earlier. When he arrived at the Nepean emergency department in the late afternoon he was in excruciating pain, but there were simply no beds for him. I have seen the pictures of this 68-year-old Vietnam veteran lying on the floor in the emergency department, writhing in pain, because there were no beds available after he arrived. The pictures were devastating. This is a man who proudly served and defended our country. I would have thought that he deserved more respect than the indignity of lying on the floor of a hospital waiting room in pain because the government refuses to acknowledge what everybody already knows—the Nepean Hospital upgrade is way overdue and desperately needed. The photos were published in my local paper, the Penrith City Gazette, this morning. Undoubtedly my community will be shocked but, sadly, not surprised, because they are used to this kind of thing happening. Our hospital is the most under-pressure hospital in the state. It has the longest emergency department and elective surgery waiting times in New South Wales.

We can do better than this and we must. Western Sydney will continue to grow at a pace outstripping most of the nation, and an even heavier burden on the struggling hospital will be relied on. In Lindsay, we have a business community and an academic and research community who are all keen to be involved in the opportunities flowing from better investment in our hospital. Government support is the only element missing. For years the evidence for this upgrade has been overwhelmingly clear. Putting these numbers and statistics aside, when an elderly war veteran is being forced to lie on the floor of the emergency department in excruciating pain, I would say it is about time to upgrade the hospital.

I will use my time here to call on Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, health minister Sussan Ley, Premier Mike Baird and the local member for Penrith, Stuart Ayres, to commit to the hospital upgrade in my community that is so desperately needed and so desperately overdue rather than Mickey pamphlets and scandals about how to upgrade a hospital with a fake petition.