COMMUNITY RALLY IN SUPPORT OF A SINGLE SITE REGIONAL HOSPITAL TO BE HELD ON SUNDAY 10 AUGUST IN CORRYONG
Towong Shire Council Mayor Andrew Whitehead today announced that Council will be leading a community rally that will take place at midday in Corryong on Sunday 10 August.
Mayor Whitehead said “Council remains gravely concerned at the current plans to redevelop the existing hospital site in Albury. Put simply, redeveloping Albury hospital will lead to insufficient capacity to meet the demands of the region for the future.
“From all the information that we have had access to; it is quite clear that there are major capacity shortfalls at the hospital right now and the planned redevelopment of the existing site will not deliver sufficient additional capacity to meet the needs of the region into the future.
“While we cannot see a way in which the redevelopment of the current site will be able to meet future demand, we would very much welcome a meeting with the Victorian government so they can show us how the redevelopment will meet future needs.
“Towong Shire has the slowest ambulance response times in Victoria. We recognise that travelling times can be longer in rural areas, but the problem is compounded by ambulance ramping at the Albury hospital. Without adequate capacity in a new single site hospital there is little hope that there will ever be any improvement.
“The further you are away from the metropolitan and regional centres, the more important it is to have the appropriate quality and quantity of health services.
This is not about beating up on the Victorian state government. We are not interested in attacking the state government. There needs to be a tripartite project with both state governments and the commonwealth government working together.
“It was Gough Whitlam who had the vision in 1972 to select Albury and Wodonga to be a national growth centre. We have now grown to a region of 300,000 people.
“Sadly, it appears that this vision for a cross border national growth centre has been completely lost on our current state and federal governments. We are calling on our current political leaders to be visionary and courageous again!”
