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

I would like to speak in the adjournment debate. I will start by expressing my serious lack of confidence in Sydney West Area Health Service, particularly its top executives. I do so for two reasons. Firstly, I am really concerned that they have become prisoners of the Sydney University medical faculty and seem to have more concern about their priorities than those of the people who are served by Blacktown/Mount Druitt Hospital.

Secondly, they are impossible communicators with the public. Let me explain why. Currently, there is a great deal of public protest about a study which is examining the closure of our emergency department. You have to understand that this is one of the busiest emergency departments and it serves a demographically disadvantaged community. We have a large proportion of Sudanese refugees and the largest number of urban Indigenous people—and I could go on. Why anyone would want to close an emergency department which is being so heavily utilised, I do not know. If SWAHS were to do it, I think we ought to have a parliamentary committee inquiry into Sydney West Area Health Service. The study will be finished in the next several weeks and it will go to the Minister for Health. I think that, inevitably, there will be a decision to maintain the emergency department. The local state government members, Richard Amery MP and Allan Shearan MP, are very confident that it is going to be retained. I share their confidence.

I should explain that my history goes back to chairing the community committee that agitated for the hospital. I was the inaugural deputy chairman of the hospital. A want of ecclesiastical qualifications prevented me from being the chair—and I was not prepared to undertake the study. But I have had a long association with that hospital.

Not so long ago, Sydney West Area Health Service looked at privatising the shops in the kiosk that services the Mount Druitt Hospital. We have had a long history of ladies auxiliaries and volunteers servicing the kiosk at Mount Druitt. In fact, an answer to a question on notice showed that the volunteers at Mount Druitt raised the largest amount of money of any volunteers at any hospital in New South Wales—not bad for a disadvantaged community. Of course the volunteers were upset when they were doing this study. Again I ask: why would you want anyone to scope the most successful volunteer organisation for closure? If you would want to do anything, it would be to learn the lessons of their success. It seems that every couple of years there is a protest meeting about a possible closure of Mount Druitt Hospital. In fact, Mount Druitt Hospital now has three specialities: paediatrics, rehabilitation and palliative care. There is also elective surgery, and we are doing very, very well in fulfilling important community needs.

But the real problem rests with Blacktown Hospital. Blacktown LGA has the largest number of early adult deaths in New South Wales. We are the heart attack capital of New South Wales, and there is a whole series of other statistics I could quote to you. Let me say that 27 per cent of patients at Blacktown LGA have to go to Westmead to have non-tertiary services provided because of the lack of medical facilities at Blacktown. This is the fight that we need to be involved in. I think it is an outrage, but it is also a reflection of the fact that the Sydney West Area Health Service have not and will not put the money into Blacktown. (Time expired)