Thursday, 20 June 2024

Maroondah Hospital

Nick McGOWAN (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:24): The people of my electorate of Ringwood but also the suburbs of Heathmont, Forest Hill, Nunawading, Blackburn and Mitcham will wake up this morning to very frosty news. It is cold enough in here, but I can tell you it is nothing in comparison to the frosty news they have received out there. That is because time and again this government has betrayed them and acted in a callous way, and in particular what I am referring to of course is Maroondah Hospital. Maroondah Hospital, as it ought to be called and will continue to be called in this place for as long as I am here – and other members, I am sure – was promised, and the people were promised, an emergency department for children in 2018. We all remember that. With great fanfare the then Premier went out there and made a great big deal of an emergency department and talked about how needy the children were – and they are and remain. Well, that was never delivered, and that was 2018. Fast-forward to the next election. They still had not delivered that one. At the next election they promised a brand new hospital on the site at Maroondah, and we promised likewise. But that is what the Labor Party promised, and yet in today’s paper, what do we read? They are already walking away from that. Now, we have already discovered –

A member interjected.

Nick McGOWAN: It is a shame. It is a disgrace. We have already discovered through the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee process that they have not allocated a single dollar of the more than $1 billion they committed to build this hospital in the forward estimates. Not in the entire forward estimates is there a single cent to build the hospital –

Georgie Crozier interjected.

Nick McGOWAN: All spin, no substance. What is worse is now there is the very real prospect that they will close Maroondah Hospital and build a hospital elsewhere. It is a disgrace. This health minister should actually resign based on this decision alone.