FOI Reveals Labor Won’t Build Fourth Pod Until 2014-2015

20 August 2009

Nationals Shadow Minister and Duty Member for Port Macquarie Melinda Pavey said today that a 60 page document from a Freedom of Information (FOI) request on the Port Macquarie Base Hospital (PMBH) expansion, reveals how the failing NSW Labor Government will not commence the urgently required fourth pod until 2014-2015. 

Mrs Pavey said the document detailed a number of NSW Department of Health briefings to the Minister for Health John Della Bosca, which refers to a “potential commencement date of 2014/15” and then states that “this will be recast many times in the intervening period as other projects are considered”.

However another document from 2008 then goes on to state that regarding the fourth pod “there is currently no set timeframe for this development”, which is shocking given the number of documents from local clinicians that emphasise that this should be the number one project for the region.

“The Minister for Health John Della-Bosca has visited Port Macquarie Hospital on an number of occasions over the last year, knowing the whole time that his incompetent Labor Government has no plan to build the fourth pod for over five years,” Mrs Pavey said.

“This is deceitful and misleading, and the I am calling on Mr Della-Bosca to come clean with the people of Port Macquarie and tell them how much longer they will be forced to wait.

“The people of Port Macquarie simply cannot wait this long given the hospital is seeing 30,000 patients per year rather than the 14,000 that it was built for, resulting in staff members now being chronically over worked.

“These damning documents also reveal how local clinicians have been begging the failing NSW Labor Government to urgently fund the long overdue fourth pod. Yet two years on they have still failed to commit.

“The FOI document states that ‘NCAHS has forwarded various correspondence to NSW Health since July 2007 with regards to the Capital Investment Strategic Plan seeking the re-prioritisation of this project to be the number one capital priority’.

”They also confirm that the incompetent NSW Labor Government’s long overdue decision to upgrade the Emergency Department (ED) is purely an interim measure as they simply do not have enough funding to build the fourth pod.

“It states that the ED ‘was seen as an interim measure until such time as funding for the Fourth Pod became available’.

“The NSW Labor Government also clearly tried to stall the urgently required upgrade of the ED, as the document states that the Nurses Association ‘wish to express their extreme frustration in the NCAHS delays in finalising the long overdue renovation of the ED’.

“I’m handing these documents to the Port Macquarie Strategic Health Forum, chaired by Leslie Williams, so that they can be used in the development of a submission to the State Labor Government to help them fight for the urgently required fourth pod,” Mrs Pavey said.