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

I move:

That this House:

(1) recognises that:

(a) 28 per cent of the Australian population live outside major cities;

(b) people living in rural and remote areas have higher rates of hospitalisations, deaths and injury and also have poorer access to, and use of, primary health care services, than people living in major cities, yet investment in regional and rural health is falling behind, leaving regional communities with outdated facilities, insufficient training places and healthcare students struggling to train locally; and

(c) the lack of open, competitive and needs-based hospital infrastructure funds means regional and rural hospitals have no transparent, competitive Commonwealth funding pathways to build critical infrastructure to deliver health services for the growing border population into the future;

(2) notes that premiers are calling for increased funding from the Commonwealth Government for hospitals, including specifically for infrastructure; and

(3) calls on the Government to establish a $2 billion Building Regional and Rural Hospitals Fund to provide competitive and needs-based investment for new buildings, equipment and planning, so health services in regional, rural and remote areas classified as MM2 and higher can apply for hospital infrastructure funding to meet the needs of their communities now and into the future.

Regional and rural Australia is in desperate need for more investment in our health, including in our health infrastructure. The stats don't lie. The National Rural Health Alliance estimates that rural Australians received $8.3 billion less in healthcare funding compared to urban Australians in the 2023-24 financial year. This funding gap has grown by almost $2 billion since 2021-22, and this has consequences. Rural and regional Australians die younger and have longer term, worse chronic disease than their metropolitan counterparts. This data matches stories from my local electorate of Indi. I hear time and time again about health infrastructure failing to meet the needs of communities right across Indi. When it fails, rural Australians endure unnecessary suffering and trauma.

Elise, whose father lives on the border, recently wrote to me concerned about a four-day delay in her father's surgery at Albury Wodonga Health. The delay led to serious complications, including a gangrenous gall bladder, sepsis and her father being placed in an intensive care unit on a ventilator. Thankfully he survived. This was not caused by a lack of will or expertise on behalf of the incredible staff at Albury Wodonga Health. The family were told the delay in treatment was due to there being only seven operating theatres between Albury and Wodonga hospitals—an absolutely appalling situation when we know that we need 13 new additional operating theatres. This region has a population of over 100,000 residents, and it's one of Australia's largest and busiest regional health centres.

The New South Wales and Victorian state governments are investing more than half a billion dollars in redevelopment of the Albury hospital; however, the upgrade is not fit for purpose. NSW Health expects the scope of the project to include new surgical and operating theatres. I'm pleased to hear that, but it came to light—and the ABC's 7.30 recently showed—that they will be constructed not as operating theatres but as empty shells without the internal fit-out and equipment required to make them operational. Can you believe it? When the two state health ministers wrote to the federal health minister seeking additional funding for Albury Wodonga Health, they were told there was not a Commonwealth grant available for this purpose. Health facilities need to be built to meet our region's growing health needs now and into the future—not with corners cut, not scaled back to retrofit a budget.

I've done the work to address this and give rural hospitals a pathway to seek additional funding from the Commonwealth to deliver the care their communities so desperately need and deserve. My proposed $2 billion Building Regional and Rural Hospitals Fund offers a vital funding lifeline for regional and rural health hospitals right across Australia. Through this fund, regional health services like Albury Wodonga Health will have the opportunity to apply for open, competitive and needs based funding to deliver health infrastructure in partnership with the states that meets the community's needs. In Indi, this would also mean places like Bright district hospital, Mansfield hospital and health precincts right across rural and regional Australia would have a pathway to seek legitimate, fair and transparent funding from the Commonwealth. This policy puts transparency back into health funding and addresses the dire underfunding in rural Australian hospitals.

The federal government has a clear role in funding health infrastructure because—you know what—they already do it. The problem is that it's often not transparent, competitive or needs based spending of taxpayer dollars. In the last election, both major parties were guilty of pork-barrelling promises for health and hospital infrastructure. Both major parties promised $200 million for a hospital in the seat of Hasluck. They promised $120 million for a Rouse Hill hospital on the border of the electorates of Greenway and Mitchell. And $150 million was promised to Flinders medical centre, which is on top of Labor's 2022 election commitment of $200 million at the same hospital in the seat of Hindmarsh. Labor promised $80 million to Fairfield hospital bordering the electorates of Fairfield and McMahon. I have no doubt these health services need this money to meet their community needs, but the real problem here is a lack of transparency. There is no open, fair process to assess need; there is no opportunity for other hospitals facing equally urgent pressures to apply for funding. I call on this government to close the stark gap in regional health funding and adopt my proposal for a $2 billion 'building regional and rural hospitals' fund.

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