Public meeting delay
By Jane Ross
THERE won’t be a public meeting about the Leongatha Hospital before the May State Budget.
This decision has been made by the Leongatha Chamber of Commerce and Leongatha Progress Association.
It flies in the face of earlier announcements that there would be such a meeting late last year or early this year.
Chamber president Darryl McGannon, said yesterday morning that the judgement was made after discussions with hospital representatives and South Gippsland Shire mayor Cr Jim Fawcett.
“They are all confident that funding will be available for the hospital.
“The general consensus was that we should wait for the May budget.
“If the hospital is funded in the May budget, what good would a meeting do?”
Up to $40 million is needed.
If the money is not there, a public meeting will then be held and pressure brought to bear in this, a State election year.
Mr McGannon said members of both Leongatha groups had mixed feelings about the decision.
“The question is, what do you do?”
Confidence about funding to rebuild the hospital rose when Health Minister Daniel Andrews visited Wonthaggi recently to officially open extensions to that facility’s emergency department.
Pressed by local journalists, he finally said “yes”, Leongatha would be rebuilt. He would not commit to when.
Cr Fawcett told The Star the decision to delay the public meeting was not made lightly.
“I discussed with the hospital board what was the best way for the community to be mobilised.
“If we hadn’t had the State election this year, we’d have gone full bore (before the budget).
‘The discussions we’ve had with each other and with the minister, lead us to be more confident than at any other time. Everything we’re hearing is positive.”
The mayor said he knew a public meeting would draw a very big crowd. If there is no money in this budget, or insufficient to do the job “we could mobilise very effectively”.
Gippsland Southern Health Service CEO Gary Templeton, said he accepted that Mr Andrews had made the recent reported commitment to Leongatha Hospital, although that had not been given directly to health service representatives.
“We have very high hopes for funding in this budget.
“We will have to deal with the consequences if there isn’t any.”
Mr Templeton has been warning for some years of the dire state of the hospital’s ageing infrastructure.
In his annual report for the 2005/06 year he said, “the state of the existing facilities and their supporting infrastructure have reached a stage where refurbishment is no longer an option”.
In 2006/07: “There is no higher priority for Gippsland Southern Health Service than to replace the existing facility in the shortest possible time frame.”
By 2008/09, the alarm bells were jangling.
“The potential for failure of a major health service facility in this sub region and the inability of any other health service to provide any back up in the event of failure is a major concern for GSHS.”
Short URL: http://www.thestar.com.au/?p=168
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