Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Paterson electorate is in the grip of a health crisis. It is difficult, if not impossible, for patients to find a bulk-billing doctor in some areas. One of the larger doctors’ surgeries at Raymond Terrace has outgrown its current site. I have been working with the doctors in this practice and the Port Stephens Council for several years to find an alternative site. Much talk has centred on a multimillion dollar health precinct for Port Stephens, with the council owned land in Raymond Terrace’s central business district earmarked as an ideal site. This project was looking to apply for funding through the Regional Partnerships program—a program which the Rudd Labor government has chosen to axe. The future for this project is now unclear.

There is also a tremendous need for dialysis in Port Stephens. I have been contacted by a number of constituents who have advised me that in Nelson Bay alone nine patients travel into Newcastle’s John Hunter Hospital or over to Maitland for treatment three times a week. There is also one patient at Tea Gardens and two from Raymond Terrace that I personally know of. The Port Stephens Council Health Advisory Service has lodged an application to Hunter New England Health for a dialysis unit to be established on the Tomaree Peninsula. In the short term, Port Stephens Hospital Action Group is facilitating two other strategies to help these patients. One is the organising of volunteer drivers to help the patients with their travelling and the other is to arrange retired nursing professionals who could assist carers to learn become confident with home dialysis. One of the suggestions has been for a dialysis unit to be integrated into the proposed GP superclinic. The Rudd Labor government promised the people of Paterson millions of dollars to establish a GP superclinic in the electorate. In a joint Labor Party media statement dated 12 November 2007 the Minister for Health and Ageing, the Hon. Nicola Roxon, and the member for Hunter, the Hon. Joel Fitzgibbon, confirmed that:

Labor will invest $5 million to establish two GP Super Clinics in the Charlton electorate and Port Stephens.

After the recent Labor budget, we now find that the funding for the Port Stephens GP superclinic is apparently not so readily available and it could take up to five years before anything substantial is done to help the health service providers and constituents of the Paterson electorate. The ALP website stated on 21 November 2007:

Australia’s national security will be a first priority for a Rudd Labor Government and taking care of ADF personnel and their families is crucial the defence of our nation.

How crucial is the defence of our nation to the ALP? It took just six months for this promise to lie in tatters. Labor claims to have put defence families front and centre this year but has failed to deliver a key promise on health services. Before the election, defence families were promised a $33.1 million investment for the establishment of 12 defence family healthcare clinics to provide free health care for ADF dependent spouses and their children. The Rudd Labor government budget revealed that this was a promise it never intended to keep. Instead of these 12 clinics, which came with the carrot of more clinics if they were successful, we now realise there will be no clinics at all. The program has been slashed to only $12.2 million, and that will be spent over four years to trial the provision of basic medical and dental services—and only in five locations. To add insult to injury, this half-hearted delivery comes with a cap of $300 a year per dependant for dental services. Williamtown RAAF Base is now in the electorate of Newcastle, and the member for Newcastle has being deadly silent on this issue.

Further north in my electorate, what will it take for Forster-Tuncurry to ever get its own public hospital if there is so much delay in getting the promised public beds, which are years overdue, into the Forster private hospital? Last September I announced $600,000 in federal government funding to introduce an after-hours GP service at the then Cape Hawke Hospital. I said the battle was not over, and called on the New South Wales Labor government to act on its responsibilities. When confronted by the media the next day, New South Wales health minister Reba Meagher had no choice but to announce plans to introduce public beds by March this year. I am starting to believe that it was just a promise to bolster the ALP candidate’s chances at the last election. Kevin Rudd said he would end the blame game. I would prefer he start the action game and deliver on these important projects to my constituents in Paterson.