Alison Penfold (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

In the October-December 2025 period, 46 per cent of patients were T4 or T5—that's low acuity—to Manning Base Hospital, but the T2 treatments that were on time in terms of servicing were 35.1 per cent, and T3 had 39.2 per cent treatment on time. Now let me compare this to Maitland Hospital. Maitland has an urgent care clinic—in fact, it was a commitment that I made and my Liberal Party colleague in the seat of Paterson made at the last election. In comparison, at Maitland Hospital 39.6 per cent of presentations were T4 or T5, yet the T2 treatment on time was 79 per cent and T3 was 60.1 per cent. In those figures alone you can see the benefit to hospital ED when you have an urgent care clinic available for low acuity, for people that could go and see a GP if one were available.

In my prebudget submission to the government back in January, under portfolio funding priorities for health, the Taree urgent care clinic was the No. 1 priority. I talked about what redirecting suitable T4 and T5 presentations to an urgent care clinic would mean. They would relieve pressure on the ED, and we can see that from those Maitland statistics. Free ED spaces and clinician time for high acuity presentations. Reduce overall waiting times and the of patients staying greater than four hours. Reduce ambulance offload delays by clearing ED capacity and reducing bottlenecks. Improve patient experience with faster treatment for low acuity problems in an Urgent Care Clinic model and make better use of workforce nurse practitioners' GP procedural skills. They can manage many of the T4-T5 problems at lower cost than an ED. I went on to say in my pre-budget submission that redirecting even 30 to 50 per cent of those annual presentations to an urgent care clinic would remove 5,000 to 8½ thousand presentations per year from the ED. That's 13 to 23 per day on average. It would deliver notable noticeable improvements in ED capacity and wait times. That exact same language I have said in numerous letters to the minister, laying out the case for an urgent care clinic in my area.

Let me give some more context. I know 'What about Taree?' is a bit of a catchcry in the parliament, and I know many people from across the chamber now know where Taree is, but I want to give some more context for why I'm so passionate about getting this facility in my electorate. Taree has an Indigenous population of some 12.7 per cent. There are a lot of Birrbay and Warrimay people who live in the Lyne electorate, who live in and around Taree from a population of about 25,000 people across the greater Taree area. So it is not only for the broader population but also specifically for a population with a significant Aboriginal population. This is a facility that would be of significant benefit and use to them.

The other context I want to give is the state of our public hospital in Taree. I grew up in and around Taree. As I've said, I went to school in Taree. We were very proud of Manning Base Hospital, back in those days. But I looked on NSW Health's site, and they don't even call it a base hospital anymore; it's now called Manning Hospital. When we, the Nationals, were in government in the New South Wales state parliament, we put aside a significant amount of money for redevelopment at what I'm still going to call Manning Base Hospital.

Recently, there have been significant concerns in the community about the state of the redevelopment, and questions have been put to Hunter New England Local Health District about these concerns about the future of the stage 2 redevelopment, and, frankly, they have been less than forthcoming. I'll read from an article from the local paper: 'The community has waited more than five years for the promised stage 2 upgrade, but, since the administration building was demolished in July 2025, there appears to be no activity on site, and the health district has ignored questions regarding whether hospital bed numbers will be slashed from 112 to 84 and whether floors 3, 4, 5 and 6 of the existing hospital will be closed on completion.'

The Manning Great Lakes Community Health Action Group and their president, Eddie Wood—and these are experienced health professionals, who are actively fighting for health services in our area—have raised these concerns and are bitterly disappointed about the response from the New South Wales Labor government and from the local health district. I'll read what he said in this article: 'What we're actually getting after 10 years is an incomplete building that does not meet the original stage 2 plan to meet the needs of our area. It is disgusting—absolutely disgusting. We're already so short of beds, it's causing bed block.'

So I want the parliament, the government and the minister for health to understand that my impassioned plea for an urgent care clinic is not just on the basis of having a service for T4 and T5. It is in the context of the serious concerns the community has about the state of health services in Taree and the area.

Interestingly, I had a retired doctor come and speak to me only last week in the electorate. He had been a GP in the area for well over 40 years. He is now retired, but his career as a GP basically spanned a very significant part in our area. He enlightened me that, under a former coalition government, in the Howard years, we actually had an after-hours GP program that was funded, and he, in fact, had received that funding for his clinic to provide after-hours, fully-bulk-billed, no-appointment-needed care. And what he said to me, in two words, was: 'It worked'—it worked for the people of the Manning. That's from the horse's mouth—from somebody who knows the value of an urgent care clinic, not just for his own business but for the people of Taree and the Manning area. An urgent care clinic has worked in our area. We desperately need one now. And he agreed.

In fact, I met another doctor, from a clinic in Tuncurry, only last week as well, and he too is impassioned about getting an urgent care clinic for the Forster-Tuncurry area. I'm so grateful that my colleague Tanya Thompson, the member for Myall Lakes, has been successful in securing state funding for an urgent care clinic under their model for Forster-Tuncurry. So she's fighting that battle, and I'm fighting for the federal funds to come for the urgent care clinic for Taree.

I wrote to the Minister for Health and Ageing, the Hon. Mark Butler, after the announcement, prior to the budget, that there will be additional funding and they're locking in the urgent care clinic model, and I thanked the government for that commitment. But I asked him: 'Is there funding for Taree?' I can't be much clearer—I can't make the case any more clearly to him. Is the budget commitment providing funding for an urgent care clinic for Taree?

As I've said, there is not a clinic between Coffs Harbour and Newcastle. It's pretty hard for me, let alone for my constituents, to have to sit here and hear colleagues on the other side get up and say, 'We're about to get our second,' or, 'We're about to get our third urgent care clinic.' Are we not Australians? Are we not equal citizens in the eyes of this government? We're an area of low socioeconomic means, an area of great need in terms of the number of GPs we have per head of population. The case I've made in terms of the challenges that we have at Manning Base Hospital—surely, the minister cannot ignore the need on the Mid North Coast. Surely he is not so cruel as to take joy in announcing more urgent care clinics in electorates that already have them while denying one for the people of the Mid North Coast.

There are Labor members in the Lyne electorate. I think Labor got 20 per cent of the vote. What message is he sending to them? Come on, Minister, we need an urgent care clinic.

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