Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to bring three projects that I hope to work for in the electorate of Mallee to the Australian parliament. If you live in regional Australia you should have access to good health services. Three things that are very evident in my electorate, in the town of Mildura, are that we need a radiation treatment facility, we need a cardiac catheter laboratory and we need a hospice. The radiation treatment facility would capture the towns of Renmark, Broken Hill, Robinvale and Mildura. At the moment, when people need those treatments they have to travel a very long way away and have dislocation of the family support networks that should be around them. That is something that I am very much going to champion.

We do not have a cath lab facility, and yet we have visiting cardiologists who want to be able to practice in Mildura. It is a four-hour drive for people who have to go and get an angiogram and then perhaps a stent. I think that this is something we need to address.

A few weeks ago we went to the honourable member for La Trobe's electorate to look at the federally funded hospice there. I think it is important that we allow people to die with dignity, that we ensure that their families can be around them and that they are in an environment that looks after them. It is one of the things that we are very much working for. The community will self-support it; we just have to make sure that the government is prepared to pay the ongoing costs.

I will just put on the record that these are three key health areas which are very important for my electorate.