The Beagle Editor,
As proof positive of the clear need for the Petition, and yet further evidence just how totally out of touch with community views NSW Health continue to be: Despite the steady stream of signatures at the Petition Table calling for Local Radiotherapy Services, in direct eyeline of NSW Health’s own ‘Information’ Stall, visiting petitioners to the Moruya Markets were openly told by the NSW Health representatives that ‘No! forget it, Local Radiotherapy is not included in the plans for the New Hospital’!
It is very unwise to use the word ‘NO’ with the people of Eurobodalla, and it yet again demonstrates the serious misjudgement by NSW Health and SNSWLHD of the strength of local sentiment.
NSW Health have been very deliberate in their use of the word ‘INFORMATION’.
In both word and deed they have once more demonstrated the clear difference between it and what the community innocently thinks is happening - Consultation!
NSW Health believe that as long as they have shared a carefully controlled amount of general information on what they intend to do, giving largely recycled information a cosmetic appearance of somehow being new and special, then they have ticked the ‘consultation’ box with no further obligation to meet community views however compelling.
Ministers Taylor and Hazzard, does this behaviour you apparently condone meet the ‘pub test’?
Maybe our Local Member, Dr Michael Holland, can assist with some badly needed ear-wax removal treatment and remind them:
a) of the $4M specifically set aside for the “Eurobodalla (South Coast)” by the previous (Liberal) Federal Health Minister in recognition of identified LOCAL NEED (but near three years later still not applied for, courtesy of the current State government),
and
b) of the current generous $8M funding pledge by our Federal Member for Gilmore, Fiona Phillips MP, for a Local Radiotherapy Centre: Also totally ignored, presumably as an administrative inconvenience for the local NSW Health executive in their comfortable oasis up in Queanbeyan?
What on earth are the Health Department’s real priorities here?
They clearly have little to do with optimum treatment outcomes, or the larger healthcare interests of the people of our region. In terms of Duty of Care, it is indefensible! ONE Advocates have heard far too many heart-breaking stories of appalling hardship and suffering to call it any other way or to back down one inch.
The two Ministers should be ashamed of the responses given on their watch and on their behalf by NSW Health about provision of local Radiotherapy, along with deeply worrying signs of reduced Paediatrics and Maternity beds and services in the new supposedly Level 4 Hospital from ‘doors opening’.
If NSW Ministers want to do the right thing by our community, please muzzle the ego and start by talking to our local healthcare champion, Dr Michael Holland MP. He’ll give the straight truth backed by frontline medical expertise rather than the self-serving administrative twaddle and pusillanimous excuses peddled from within NSW Health executive ranks.
Our community elected Dr Holland for one supremely good reason: He genuinely cares! The Ministers need to prove to us by concrete actions - no more words please - that they are capable of being so themselves. Healthcare is sacred ground and should be well above games of political manoeuvring and electoral advantage.
The purpose of entering politics is to be of service to others, not career advancement. Ministers Taylor and Hazzard need to be quite clear: Our community is in no mood for joking and does not take well to being patronised. We thought this lesson had been learned and the message of the 2021 Bega By-election had got through loud and clear? From NSW Health’s continuing intransigence, obviously not! M&F Boulting
ONE New L4 Eurobodalla Hospital Advocates & Petition Co-ordinators
Above: Local Petition supporters Suzanne and Rob Shorrock and ONE Advocates Head
Petitioner Mylène Boulting.
18 September 2022 will conclude the opportunity for the people of Eurobodalla AND Bega Valley to add their names to the communities’ Petition calling for urgent provision of LOCAL RADIOTHERAPY SERVICES.
The final count promises to deliver some embarrassingly unwelcome news to a disinterested NSW Health regional executive. It is reasonable to assume its actions reflect the views of the State government’s two Health ministers, Bronwyn Taylor MLC and Brad Hazzard MP.
