Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is a battle going on in McMillan for good health services, including for a new hospital for West Gippsland. In particular, I have a petition here from West Gippsland residents.

The petition read as follows—

To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives:

This petition of certain citizens of East Victoria especially the West Gippsland District draws to the attention of the House: The lack of a MRI medicare license in our community. Baw Baw Radiology purchased a state of the art MRI scanner in May 2016 which services a patient pool of approximately 200,000 people which are currently forced to pay exorbitant fees or travel to Melbourne for a bulk-billed MRI scan.

We therefore ask the House to grant Baw Baw Radiology a full MRI license, or at least a partial license, to enable them to bring a genuine bulk-billing service to the 200,000 citizens in their catchment area of Gippsland.

from 1 citizen

Petition received.

Truneah Jackson is the principal petitioner. This petition obviously comes with significant support material including letters, emails and many hundreds of signatures. It is not a lot to ask for regional communities to have the best health services government can provide, and as many of these MRIs are owned by very large international companies it is good to give the locals a go now and again.