Emma McBride (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Gosford by-election is in full swing. This will be the first chance for New South Wales voters to have their say on the new Premier and health minister. Labor's candidate, seven-time Paralympic champion and local schoolteacher Liesl Tesch, is bringing her formidable gold-medal-winning dedication and performance to standing up for local health care. Residents on the Central Coast will go to the polls on 8 April. This will be a referendum on health.

Labor has announced that it will set up a nurse-led, walk-in centre at Gosford in the peninsula as part of its new approach to health and hospitals on the Central Coast. A nurse-led, walk-in centre is run by a small team of 10 nurses providing free medical advice between 7.30 am and 10 pm seven days a week. Patients are aged two and older and present with minor ailments and injuries. This is in response to a lack of access to GPs on the Central Coast and the overstretched emergency department at Gosford Hospital, which has long waits. Gosford Hospital's emergency department has some of the longest waits in the state, and almost half of the emergency department presentations are in the two least urgent categories.

New South Wales Labor has reiterated its opposition to the privatisation of Wyong Hospital—our community hospital—and has grave concerns that Gosford Hospital is next on the hit list. Labor is committed to public hospitals and public health, not the Americanisation of the New South Wales health system and not the privatisation of our community hospitals. I call on everyone to vote Labor.