TIME TO UNITE ON HOSPITAL
POWER players in the ugly stoush over the Tweed Valley Hospital need to take off the gloves for the good of the community.
That includes brawlers from both sides of the debate.
The decision by Tweed residents to anoint Nationals incumbent
Geoff Provest at the weekend’s
NSW election was a vote of confidence for the new $534 million hospital to be built on farmland on Cudgen Rd.
The race to win the state’s most northern seat was effectively a referendum of where the much-needed hospital should be built.
Saturday’s decision ended months of kneeing, eye gouging and bickering from both sides of politics and supporters, as the multimillion-dollar project was used as a grubby political football.
A small portion of people, some of them neighbours, branded each other selfish liars and traitors as they cast opposing views of whether the hospital should be built in Kingscliff or Kings Forest.
Among it all, the real victims were forgotten — medical staff and the sick and elderly.
Doctors and nurses at the coalface at the dated Tweed Hospital told harrowing tales of ambulances being forced to take less critical patients to other hospitals because their own emergency department was in bypass mode; vulnerable people were unable to get specialised treatment; and “pop up” facilities were being put up to ease demand.
In small towns elsewhere in the state, politicians screaming out for major infrastructure looked on in dismay.
Jasmin Jones, a councillor in Yass, put the whole sorry mess into perspective in August.
The mother of five children had been lobbying for a new hospital in her town for nearly a decade. Like many other mums, Cr Jones gave birth to one of her children, her third, in an ambulance by the side of the road because Yass, with a population of 16,000, did not have a maternity service, and she was on her way to the nearest – 60km south in Canberra.
Whether you supported the proposed site on Cudgen Rd before Saturday’s poll, the fight is over. It is time for the community to come together so a new hospital can be built as quickly as possible.
That is not to say those opposed to the Cudgen site should not keep the government accountable on its promise to restrict rezoning and over -development in the area. It does not give bureaucrats a free ride.
However, the underlying fact is that the region is badly in need of improved infrastructure such as medical facilities and housing, everyday living privileges most big centres take for granted.
The best way to achieve that is unity and sensible, mature debate.