Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Werribee skyline has changed of late. The Werribee Mercy Hospital is being completely overhauled, with a multilevel development four floors above the McAuley subacute-bed unit. This is a welcome addition to our community that has experienced and continues to experience sustained and rapid population growth. The Werribee Mercy Hospital, led by executive officer Professor Linda Mellors, does incredible work to support the medical needs of my community by providing care and life-saving treatment. But, like all services in my community, it struggles to keep up, let alone get ahead of the curve in terms of demand.

I welcome the state government's commitment to the hospital. I welcome the $87 million redevelopment that's about to open in my community. The redevelopment will provide an extra 64 in-patient beds, an ICU unit for the first time, which has been so desperately needed for so long, and six new operating theatres. My state Labor colleagues have demonstrated that they understand the local needs and growth—we're now a city of 250,000. The same cannot be said for the federal government, however. Our new hospital building will open without the support it needs from the federal government, without the recurrent funding that will ensure it can be staffed and can operate at its full capacity from day one. We need to note that 93 babies are born in my community every week, not all of whom can be born at our local hospital. The new redevelopment won't cater for a massive increase in the number of babies being born locally, because this government is starving our state government of funds for hospitals. That's because across the next few years we're going to be $6 million short across the Mercy public hospital sector. If a Labor government is elected, we will commit $2.8 billion over six years. This is much needed and will mean that hospitals like ours will get the coverage and the funding that they need.

Further to this, Labor has committed to investing $80 million to boost the number of eligible MRI machines and approve 20 new licences, meaning 500,000 more scans will be funded by Medicare over the course of the first Labor budget. I recently met with MRI service providers in my community—they do 500 scans a week. We do not have a licence at our local hospital, so they are being done by a private provider. Our hospital is putting patients in ambulances to drive them across the road to get their MRI scan done—I've experienced this with my own mother. It has got to stop. I can't imagine the waste of money and the inefficiency. We need an MRI licence for our local hospital. I call on this government to join Labor in committing to increasing the capacity for our local hospitals to provide this service.