Regional Australians experience worse health outcomes and lower life expectancy than metropolitan Australia. This inequity has persisted for generations, and it is entirely unacceptable.

Here in our region, healthcare workers, the community and councils are fighting for a greenfield, single-site hospital at Albury Wodonga and I’m right with them.

Albury Wodonga Health (AWH) is the largest health service between Sydney and Melbourne. It is the only cross border health service in the country. Stretched across two separate hospital campuses, medical and surgical bed use at AWH is close to 100%, compared to the Victorian benchmark of 85%.

As the population on the border grows, our health service is only going to get busier. By 2040 we will need a hospital capable of handling 150,000 emergency presentations, 40,000 surgeries and 1,900 births every year.

In 2021, current and future challenges were recognised when AWH commissioned a Clinical Services Plan. It found ‘AWH has near constant access block, cannot flow patients through the health services and is unable to admit all patients from ED that need inpatient support’. It further found ‘splitting… service delivery across two campuses creates significant risks to patient safety’.

The Clinical Services Plan recommended, in black and white, that AWH should consolidate services to a single site.

In October 2022, just prior to two state elections, the New South Wales and Victorian Premiers flew into Albury and announced $558 million to ‘redevelop’ the current Albury hospital.

Now I cautiously welcomed this announcement. At the time I didn’t want to let the perfect get in the way of the good. But we now know this announcement is nowhere near good, and nowhere near enough.

In 2018, the NSW Government spent $723 million to build Tweed Valley Hospital, for a catchment size similar to ours. In 2022, the Victorian government committed up to $675 million to build a new greenfield hospital in West Gippsland to service 60,000 people.

Why then would the state governments only allocate $225 million each to our region of 300,000 people?

The release of the Master Plan by the NSW Government in October 2023 did nothing to alleviate our concerns. It was just a series of pictures, four paragraphs and nine dot points. Nothing on how many extra beds, nothing on how many extra theatres, or carparks.

Then, in early 2024, Member of the NSW Parliament Dr Amanda Cohn used the parliament to uncover a letter sent from Albury Wodonga Health’s chief executive and Chair to the NSW and Victorian Health Ministers.

The letter stated the $558 million “will not deliver the Government’s policy intent of a single-site hospital.”

Our worries that $558 million was not going to meet the acute health care needs of our community in the decades to come were proven to be warranted.

It’s not just about money – there isn’t enough land on the intended site to build a bigger hospital with more theatres, more acute and sub-acute beds, and workforce training facilities. And don’t even get me started on car parks – there is no space for enough car parks in an area with virtually no public transport.

I have used every opportunity as the independent federal member for Indi to put forward the case for a substantial Commonwealth government contribution to a new Albury Wodonga Hospital.

I have met with Health Minister Mark Butler, Treasurer Jim Chalmers, and in October 2024, I personally handed the Prime Minister a letter signed by 200 doctors from the Albury-Wodonga region. It laid out why the current situation, with two hospitals on either side of the border, where services are duplicated and separated, is inefficient, inadequate, and unsafe.

Assistant Health Minister Ged Kearney attended the Regional Health Summit in Wodonga on my invitation and I organised a meeting with Assistant Minister for Rural and Regional Health Emma McBride and the former mayors of Wodonga and Albury councils and others in Canberra last year.

The case was clear in 2021, and it’s still clear in 2025. We need a greenfield, single site hospital on the border. NSW and Victoria must commit to this investment in our healthcare, they must put more money on the table, and the Commonwealth must also make a contribution.

I acknowledge the Albury and Wodonga Mayors met with the Victorian Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas on Tuesday but were disappointed in the outcome of that meeting.

I understand from media reporting that Minister Thomas quoted Kenny Rogers’ The Gambler to the Mayors, to deter them from their efforts.

Well, I am familiar with Mr Rogers’ work and I can say to the Minister, we’re still sittin’ at the table, we’re not countin’ because the dealin’s not done.