Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In early 2019 my community worked extraordinarily hard, and I worked hard with them, to secure a $10.4 million Commonwealth funding commitment for a much-needed Yanchep Health Centre. The context to that funding was that the northern coastal suburbs of my electorate, 50 to 70 kays north of Perth, are thriving. They're a growing corridor of Perth—in fact, they're one of the fastest-growing population centres in Australia—and there's still a very strong overreliance of medical facilities which are located further south and that necessitates long commute times for locals to access proper health care.

After that $10.4 million of Commonwealth funding for the Yanchep Health Centre, three years on and despite record levels of ambulance ramping in WA and record emergency department running times, sadly—and, in my observation, totally inexplicably—the WA government has just not met its commitments and got on with the job of building this centre. When the project was initially announced, the WA government revealed a completion date of October 2022. However, due to WA government delays, which, again, are just totally unexplained, the construction will now not likely commence until late next year and that will mean the completion of the project is very unlikely to happen until very late in 2023 or early 2024.

This is again all in the further context of the fact that the Australian government, the Commonwealth Liberal coalition government, has been funding hospitals in Western Australia at an increase of 72.8 per cent between 2012-13 and 2020-21. Over that same time the WA government's funding for their own public hospitals has increased by only 18.4 per cent. I think it leads to an observation that the WA government has not been adequately managing the state's healthcare system and, obviously, that is during a period where the state has no COVID-19 in the community.

The time for delays and obfuscation by the state government have to be over with respect to the Yanchep Health Centre. It needs to get on with the job of building the Yanchep Health Centre and improving the public health system in suburbs like mine in Yanchep as well as Perth's northern suburbs more generally. If people are seeking health care, they shouldn't have to wait for hours to be seen. The constituents of Pearce and the residents of WA just expect the right thing from the state government, and they deserve uninterrupted access to adequate healthcare services. The idea that there is $10.4 million sitting there committed to building a healthcare centre which is badly needed, and there hasn't been anything like the schedule and timetabling that the WA government had promised, to me is just baffling. It would be good for the state government to get this thing built. It would be good for the Commonwealth government to get this thing built. It would be good for all of the citizens who live in my electorate, who would come to rely on this excellent facility once it has been built. I'm imploring the state government to get on with the job.