Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On Sunday I did a couple of things that were absolutely delightful. I visited the home of Emma Mary Griffin. Her family had organised a wonderful birthday party and invited family members, of course, and neighbours. Emma has lived at Rooty Hill for 30 years and prior to that lived on a farm at Marsden Park. On Sunday, Emma turned 100 years old. I think it is a wonderful accomplishment not only to turn 100 but to be still living in your own home at that wonderful age. I asked Emma what the secret was to her longevity, and in a flash she said, ‘Hard work,’ as family members chorused, ‘Hard work,’ so obviously it is a philosophy that is well imbued in her family.

I also attended a farewell party organised by the Sydney Australian Filipino Seniors. President Elvira Gacis said that I must attend because they were honouring the service of our Philippines Consulate General, Her Excellency Maria Theresa Lazaro, who will shortly complete more than five years service as the consul general in New South Wales. She has been an outstanding success. It is no secret, of course, that the Blacktown local government area in my electorate has the highest number of Australians of Filipino descent who call Australia home—something like 11,500, or 7.5 per cent of the electorate. I am pleased to say that my colleague the honourable member for Werriwa and I, together with the member for Lindsay and the member for Parramatta, hosted a lunch for the consul general and the ambassador. She is a marvellous lady who dedicated herself to the community she sought to serve. I am pleased to say that her service has been recognised by the government of the Philippines and that she is ambassador-elect to Switzerland. I am looking forward to the opportunity of perhaps catching up with her there next year.

Not so happily, I want to talk about Blacktown Hospital because I am really concerned about a series of distressing statistics. Blacktown LGA has the highest number of early adult deaths, 637, in New South Wales, which is higher than rural Australia. For people aged below 75, the potentially avoidable deaths table provided by the New South Wales Chief Health Officer identifies Blacktown as having the worst smoothed estimate of standardised mortality, at 121.1.

Blacktown has the highest heart attack, or acute myocardial infarction, rate in New South Wales at 560, which is double the number of Nepean. The Blacktown rate is approximately 50 per cent worse than the New South Wales average. Blacktown has the worst cardiovascular disease death record and the highest number of smoking or alcohol related hospital separations. The number of heart patients having to be transferred to Westmead Hospital because of the unavailability of cardiac catheterisation at Blacktown has increased by 67 per cent. The delay associated with transfers is unnecessarily increasing the amount of heart tissue being damaged. Blacktown Hospital is the only major metropolitan level 5 or 6 hospital which does not have immediately available nuclear medicine services.

In 2005, 27 per cent of patients from Blacktown LGA had to be transported to Westmead to have non-tertiary services because of the lack of facilities that should be at Blacktown, and that number will increase to 40 per cent in a decade. I certainly hope that the state Minister for Health and our federal Minister for Health and Ageing will sympathetically review measures to rectify this situation.