Cancer groups rally for Cancer Centre in Albury-Wodonga
17-June-2010
A JOINT MEDIA RELEASE FROM SOPHIE MIRABELLA AND THE HON SUSSAN LEY
A busload of cancer patients and carers from the border community rallied outside Parliament House in Canberra yesterday, angry that they’d been overlooked in the Rudd government’s Regional Cancer program.
The delegation and shire Council mayors and councillors were armed with submissions from more than 17,000 people all asking the same question: why was there no funding for a Regional Cancer Centre for the border?
They were all disappointed after the announcement in April because there is a desperate need for better cancer health services in this area.
With patients currently forced to travel hundreds of kilometres for proper care, they were excited when the Rudd Government specifically designed a health program to provide cancer facilities to cater for rural and regional Australians where people are three times more likely to die from cancer within five years of being diagnosed than those living in the city.
The disappointment turned to frustration when people discovered that some regions which received funding didn’t even meet the government’s own selection criteria and they vowed to fight that decision and to prove to the Government that a centralised cancer centre was very much needed.
The residents were met by Federal Member for Farrer, Sussan Ley, Shadow Health Minister, Peter Dutton, and representatives of Federal Member for Indi, Sophie Mirabella and Federal Member for Murray, Dr Sharman Stone.
Representatives of the delegation met with the Minister for Rural and Regional Health – Warren Snowdon, who advised that the funds under the program were fully expended and there are no plans for funding any more centres.
Federal Member for Indi, Sophie Mirabella said the Rudd Labor Government designed this program specifically to provide funding for cancer centres in rural and regional areas, but while the border missed out, Gosford was successful.
“Gosford does not meet the remoteness requirements that were stipulated under the program guidelines, therefore the application did not meet the criteria. How is it possible that their application was successful and ours wasn’t when their application didn’t even meet the criteria?” Mrs Mirabella said.
“It is obvious Government decisions aren’t being made on need but for political convenience. It’s all very dodgy.
“If Victorian Premier John Brumby has a plan to push more people out to the country, where is the funding to help ease the capacity constraints on our hospitals?”
Federal Member for Farrer, Sussan Ley, said she was unable to understand how such a worthwhile project which would benefit so many was not supported.
“Our doctors, patients and carers are absolutely exhausted by this process. If Nicola Roxon had been up-front with everyone about this program in the first place it would have been different; but she has bent the rules of the program for political gain and now those with a real need are left high and dry.”
“For Minister Snowdon to say that Gosford was funded because it has a rural catchment is a joke, Ms Mirabella said.
“All hospitals, including those in metropolitan Sydney and Melbourne, have a rural and regional catchment.
“This facility would be directly placed in a central regional location with a large rural catchment but without the luxury of close proximity to a large city which Gosford has. It would service thousands of people who would normally have to travel hundreds of kilometres for diagnosis and specialist care.
“The difference is that we did meet the criteria and Gosford didn’t,” she said.
Ms Ley and Mrs Mirabella have pledged to continue to support the community in their push to build a regional cancer centre whose services would include diagnostic radiation, paediatric and haematology treatments; none of which are currently available in this region.