17 October 2023

I will never stop fighting for better healthcare for my electorate of Indi, including for a new single-site hospital on the Border. 

The Albury Wodonga region is growing fast and our current two-hospital situation is not meeting our needs. In recent weeks elective surgeries have been cancelled once again due to capacity issues. 

Last year the NSW and Victorian Governments finally announced a new single-site hospital on the existing Albury hospital site. I welcomed the announcement at the time, but the masterplan was released yesterday by the two state governments and it is grossly inadequate. 

The supposed masterplan is just a series of pictures, four paragraphs and nine dot points. Eleven months and $2 million later and that’s all we get. 

Nothing on how many extra beds, nothing on how many extra theatres, or carparks. No detail on exactly how it will meet the acute health care needs of our community in the decades to come. 

Once again it feels like we have been let down by the NSW and Victorian Governments – we’re too far from Sydney or Melbourne for them to understand or care about the true health needs of our communities. 

Our community deserves world-class healthcare, close to home. We deserve detail, transparency and genuine consultation. 

Without that we are left to assume that we are being sold a lemon.