The Nationals Member for Lowan, Emma Kealy, has demanded the Allan Labor Government produce a clear and public funding commitment for the long-awaited Hamilton Base Hospital redevelopment.
Since 2022, Western District Health Service has been seeking funding to upgrade the hospital’s emergency department and intensive care unit, which former chief executive Rohan Fitzgerald said failed human rights and represented third-world conditions.
Ms Kealy has consistently advocated alongside the service and the community, but the Allan Labor Government has repeatedly refused requests for funding.
“Western District Health Service has completed multiple feasibility studies, funding questionnaires and commissioned an exhaustive hospital master plan, and earlier this year even committed $4 million of its own funding to complete an interim upgrade at the hospital’s emergency department,” she said.
“It is a blight on the Allan Labor Government that the emergency department is in the same state as it was almost two decades ago, and there has been no commitment to rectify this.
“This is a critical area of any hospital, but for years the dedicated staff in Hamilton have been forced to work in cramped, insecure conditions because of government inaction.
“There are areas that are separated only by a curtain where you have to walk through one curtained area to get into the next. It is cluttered, with little privacy or respect for patients.
“These conditions don’t support the incredible hospital staff to provide the best possible quality of care.”
Ms Kealy said Labor’s health minister needed to explain why the community had endured such a long wait for an upgrade, and immediately set out a plan for the hospital’s redevelopment.
“The people of Hamilton and surrounding areas have waited long enough. The need for action is immediate and undeniable,” she said.
“Our communities deserve a firm commitment, a transparent road map to redevelopment and a clear date by which this long overdue upgrade will be delivered.”
