Mrs JUDY HANNAN (Wollondilly) (17:39): By leave: I speak today to express my profound frustration at the continuing inequity in access to public health care across Wollondilly, Wingecarribee and the Southern Highlands. Many members have spoken of long travel distances in their electorates and seem to assume that patients in the Wollondilly electorate are close to the city and therefore close to health care. That is not true. I note the kilometres and hours people in those other electorates have to travel to get to hospitals. The people in my electorate do likewise. I refer to two emails I received in the last two weeks. In one email, a person describes travelling by train to the Prince of Wales Hospital. He is a sick man from Bargo who travels to hospital three times a week, which is physically draining for him. He leaves home at 8.45 a.m. and does not get home until 6.00 p.m. most nights. He is desperate to find a way to stop having to make those journeys.
In the second email, another person tells me that they have to drive 130 minutes to and from hospital, if they are lucky. Petrol and tolls cost them $100 a week on average, sometimes more. If the person stays with their dad during the two hours of his treatment, it costs $39 in parking fees. This person receives a pension of $1,067 each fortnight. Fourteen days of parking fees would leave no money to eat or pay other bills. This person explains how they hate to be made to feel like a beggar, but they really need some relief. Their dad needs them to visit him, as he is scared, frail and depressed. Those emails are typical examples of the ones I get.
The Wollondilly electorate is not in the back of Broken Hill, but my people travel just as far and have exactly the same issues. Do members know how hard it is to get 10,000 signatures on a paper petition? My electorate has a lot of elderly people. They started an online petition to get some cancer care in the public hospital in Bowral and got 4,000-plus signatures. Many elderly people in my area do not have email, so yesterday two people went around our local community, not the whole of New South Wales. I have now tabled a petition bearing 10,440 signatures calling for a dedicated public cancer care treatment and infusion centre at Bowral hospital.
Another member said in their contribution that our communities are not asking for preferential treatment, they are demanding equitable treatment. Getting these 15,000 petition signatures should be a turning point. Those signatures represent thousands of residents demanding fair and affordable access to lifesaving treatment closer to home. The petition represents the voices of cancer patients and their families who are exhausted by travelling for treatment, families struggling with the additional financial burden, and carers who sacrifice their own wellbeing to support loved ones. I have heard of parents of ill children who are physically drained and considerably out of pocket as they are paying for fuel, tolls and parking every day that they visit their children and dependents.
Another member noted that there is a place for telehealth, but I believe that patients need to have a face‑to‑face consultation as least once every twelve months. Unless somebody tells me that I am wrong, it seems that a healthy person with an issue who needs a telehealth appointment cannot access that service unless they have seen a doctor in the past 12 months, so we need to look at that as well. Telehealth is no substitute for permanent, regularly available, face-to-face public health care.
Wingecarribee and Wollondilly are not remote outposts. They form part of a growing region that has substantial healthcare needs and an ageing population. Young families coming into the area also puts pressure on existing services. I call upon the Government to commit to establishing, at the very least, a dedicated public cancer treatment and infusion centre. The Government should expand all the specialist outpatient services, improve the diagnostic capacity and provide more permanent public healthcare facilities through all regional areas. Regional does not mean the back of Bourke. Regional also means the Southern Highlands. It is time for delivery of meaningful investment, genuine regional health equity and essential public health care closer to home. All of our residents deserve nothing less. I thank the member for putting up this public interest debate.
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