Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

That is what people in Canberra and other areas around the state say. Quite often we do have delays because of the weather.

Associate Professor Tom Shakespeare will commence the first Lismore radiation oncology clinic in April, and that is very welcome. The linear accelerator will be housed in one of the centre’s two bunkers, where there is capacity for a second linear accelerator in the future—and, of course, we want another one. We have already started lobbying about that. The fact is that we have the bunker there and we will fill it. It will happen. That is what often happens in health. If you know how health works, you would know that you have it there as soon as the numbers become a reality. We know they are there notionally but they become a reality and it has to come online. We will not give up.

The radiation oncology service will also include a CT scanner for radiotherapy planning, an x-ray unit to treat skin cancers, and associated work spaces integrated with the existing cancer care unit that will relocate to the new cancer care centre in May. There are two new technical specialists. Medical physicist Nick Bennie and deputy chief radiation therapist Stephen Manley have joined the cancer care centre. Over the next three months, the linear accelerator that we looked at will be commissioned. That means that it will be up and running—it takes a while for all of that to happen—and new frontline staff will be trained.

The other local happening was the Lismore tradesman-of-the-year calendar. Six hundred copies of that have already been sold. The Northern Star reported a few weeks back that they had sold ‘faster than hotcakes’. The calendar is to raise money for the positron emission tomography scanner, the PET, at Lismore Base Hospital. We are actually going for a PET CT scanner. They are available in major metropolitan areas, and we understand that it can happen in our area. (Time expired)

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