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

I rise today with a message to the federal government and to the New South Wales and the Victorian state governments. On all available evidence, these three governments are planning on spending more than half a billion dollars on a hospital—

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 16:00 to 16: 10

Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I call the member for Indi on resumption.

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

That was a clinical services building, which they already know will not meet the health needs of our community. I'm speaking of course of the planned $558 million redevelopment of the Albury hospital campus announced by the Victorian and New South Wales premiers ahead of the Victorian 2022 election. The need for a new hospital for Albury Wodonga, serving a catchment of 300,000 people, has long been documented. The current situation with two hospitals on either side of the border, where services are duplicated and separated, is inefficient, inadequate and unsafe.

When the current funding was announced, I welcomed it. The two premiers said they would fulfil our community's need for a single-site hospital, and I took them at their word. But, since then, it has become increasingly clear that this funding will never deliver that promise. In fact, a letter from Albury Wodonga Health's chief executive, Bill Appleby, and chair, Jonathan Green, to the Victorian and New South Wales health ministers on 19 December last year said explicitly, 'This investment will deliver the government's policy intent of a single-site hospital.' Of course, the New South Wales and Victoria governments will not admit this. We only know about this letter because of the excellent work of Dr Amanda Cohn in the New South Wales parliament. Instead, the New South Wales and Victorian governments are stonewalling, dismissing the evidence from our health leaders, clinicians and patients. And here I must acknowledge Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care, Ged Kearney, who has come to the border and listened to our communities, for which I am most grateful.

Why is it that our health service—the biggest, busiest health service between Melbourne and Sydney—must look at other, smaller hospitals with smaller catchments and see that they got more funding? In 2018, the Tweed Valley Hospital in New South Wales was allocated $723 million from the New South Wales government to build a new hospital for a catchment size similar to ours on the border. Shellharbour Hospital gets $700 million as well, and the Victorian government has committed up to $675 million to build a new greenfield hospital in West Gippsland to service only 60,000 people. Why would the state governments only allocate $225 million each to our region? We need the federal, New South Wales and Victorian governments to all come together and commit to addressing our needs now and into the future. We need this health service funded properly so we get the single-site, world-class hospital we so desperately need and ultimately deserve.