Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to make the House of Representatives aware of what's happening in my electorate of Indi and to call for urgent attention and resources for the COVID-19 situation in towns like Albury-Wodonga, Wangaratta and others in regional Victoria.

I have just notified the health minister, Mr Greg Hunt, of the situation on the border, and I thank him for his commitment that Wodonga will be at the front of the queue when rapid antigen testing becomes available next week. Many communities in my electorate are facing COVID-19 outbreaks and transmission in the community for the first time as our economy opens up. We knew this was coming—inn fact, it was part of the national plan—and yet it seems there has been no plan to make sure we have the resources we need to respond to outbreaks when they occur in regional places such as mine.

When asked about cases in Wodonga today, the Victorian chief health officer seemed unaware of what we were facing. An equivalent-sized outbreak in Melbourne would be around 3,000 cases a day. For us, this is a very serious challenge—and for smaller communities, the numbers we're seeing are pushing our health services to the brink. In Indi, we're blitzing vaccination targets; I'm very pleased about that. More than 81 per cent of people 16 years and over are fully vaccinated, and almost 95 per cent have had one dose. I'm so proud and grateful to everyone who has got vaccinated. But despite this amazing effort, COVID-19 has found its way into our community—especially to children, who either can't get vaccinated or only recently became eligible.

Almost half of the cases in north-eastern Victoria yesterday were aged under 18, and every day we hear of new schools that have been affected. In Indi, more than 13 schools are closed due to cases of COVID-19 in the past two weeks. Even more schools in the neighbouring town of Albury have been closed, again affecting people in Wodonga. It's less than a week since all students at regional Victorian schools returned to in-classroom learning. A time that should have been a return to normality after two challenging years is instead full of disruption, with even more uncertainty and demands on families.

Due to the high demand on contact tracers in the health department, schools are now expected to do their own contact tracing. Schools are contact tracing, coordinating deep cleaning and offering both on-site and remote learning all at once. Something has to give. In Wodonga, people were turned away from testing centres before 9 am this morning and less than two hours after their opening doors our local health service was already at capacity, telling people to stay home, isolate and try again tomorrow. Imagine being so desperate to be tested for COVID-19, to do the right thing, so desperate not to be turned away yet again, that you arrive at the testing centre and camp out at 4 am? That's what's happening in Wodonga, and this is absolutely unacceptable.

The federal and state governments have known this moment would come for more than a year, but still regional health services are being left to respond without enough support from the major cities. Epidemiologists have been flown into assist today, and I'm happy about that, but it's not enough—we need a lot more help. Albury-Wodonga Health has already wound back non-core services—services such as dental and community allied health and pain management services—to move staff to testing. In Albury-Wodonga, the cancer centre has had to convert a ward to become ready to take COVID-19 patients because Albury-Wodonga's main hospital simply does not have any negative-pressure rooms.

Nowhere else in Australia has a specialist cancer hospital which has had to be used for COVID-19. This is one of many reasons, but a core reason, right now today for why we need government to fund a new hospital for Albury-Wodonga. We need it urgently. For years, regional health services have cared diligently for those in their communities, but people needing complex or high-level care were transferred to bigger cities. But with hospitals in Melbourne and Sydney now already at capacity where will our people be cared for?

I can't say enough about how proud I am of our regional health services and of the dedicated workers who are putting in extreme hours to keep up with demand; as a nurse and midwife, I know they will do anything for their patients. But I plead now: send us help for testing and contact tracing. Send us extra staff: our communities need it and they need it now.