By NOEL MURPHY
IT MIGHT be the number one item needed in Geelong battler northern suburbs but the Barwon Health North mini-hospital was given short shrift by Labor in this week’s State budget.
Liberal MP Simon Ramsay took the Government to task in parliament for short-changing the project which he said the Department of Health wanted under way next year.
“I have scanned the budget papers … and the only reference I can find in relation to a commitment from Labor is on page 41 of budget paper 4, where it indicates that the estimated cost of expenditure for Barwon Health North is now $33 million, and the expenditure as at June this year is $380,000,” he said.
“There is a line item that suggests $1.7 million has been allocated for the 2015-16 financial year. I have googled Barwon Health North, but I can find no reference made to it by any of the sitting Labor MPs since that announcement in October.
“Because I have been told that the directive from government is that opposition MPs are not to talk to Barwon Health to gather information in relation to this commitment, I ask the minister to provide an assurance that the government is committed to this health service for northern Geelong and to provide to the chamber a construction time frame for this facility.”
Barwon Health North, the previous Liberal government’s response to a public campaign for a northern hospital, was to be $28 million “innovative and integrated community-based ambulatory care service model providing an urgent care centre”, incorporating the Corio Community Centre.
It reneged, however, on an election promise to build a $50m stand-alone community hospital at Waurn Ponds.
Mr Ramsay said that when announced, 12 months ago, the Barwon Health North facility was heralded as unprecedented. Despite its non-hospital status, he said it “surprised many” that it took a coalition government to provide health funding to a region that was “strongly held by Labor but was ignored by both federal and state Labor MPs for decades”.
“It was an important commitment given that one-third of category 4 and 5 patients presenting at Geelong’s emergency department were from Geelong’s northern suburbs,” he said.
“While this announcement was made in early May 2014, prior to the budget, a proposed site was under consideration in consultation with the City of Greater Geelong.”
