Ken O'Dowd (Flynn, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week, Senator Bridget McKenzie and I visited a couple of health centres in my electorate of Flynn. Minister McKenzie is the minister for regional services, including health in regional areas. It was disturbing that the two hospitals we visited, Gladstone and Theodore, had issues regarding their maternity and childbirth centres. Although the Queensland government has been offered $7.5 billion extra over the next five years, they have not signed off on this agreement. And, yet, they see fit to close down over 40 childbirthing centres in Queensland and push patients on to the bigger hospitals on the coast—for instance, Rockhampton, Mackay and Bundaberg. This puts the women in the regional centres of my electorate, and other regional centres of Queensland, in a precarious situation, because they do not know exactly when they're going to give birth to their new child. One lady from Theodore told me that it took her three weeks of supplying her own accommodation in Rockhampton—that's some 250 kilometres from Theodore—and she had to pay those expenses herself. She also had to have childminding services back home in Theodore, and her husband had to give up some work to be with the children when the babysitter was not there.

So, in all, the whole three weeks was a financial cost to the family. It certainly caused hardship—a slight on liveability for that particular person. She wasn't the only one in the room—about six other ladies had the same issues. And, of course, transport: they had to supply their own transport to travel 250 kilometres away but also for the regular backwards-and-forwards trips to the doctor's. I thought that was hitting a bit below the belt.

If Queensland Health want to save on cost by having the types of doctors that they require—obstetricians, gynaecologists et cetera—in those areas, they should come up with some formula that will help them financially to relocate those women who are expecting a child to defray some of the costs when they go into the bigger cities. And it could be for two, three, four weeks—who knows, when they leave their town, how long they're going to be away? This is the uncertainty that this new system of shutting down 40 particular childbirthing centres— (Time expired)