What about the Launceston General Hospital ?

The Launceston General Hospital is the second largest hospital in our state of Tasmania and has long been a thorn in the side of any Hobart-centric government.

The LGH is a tertiary teaching hospital. In plain English, this means that it is a top-level hospital, providing a comprehensive range of clinical health services as well as giving and receiving the benefits that come with the training of medical students.

Northern Tasmania must never, ever, give up the LGH’s precious status of tertiary teaching hospital. When properly funded, it is the greatest guarantee that we will ever have of ensuring that the whole state has a first-world health system.

Very sadly, our current health minister Lara Giddings has over recent years been trying to foist a new health system on our state which has meant:

* an abandonment of the LGH’s hospital status,
* continued centralisation of ‘statewide services’ at the Royal Hobart Hospital, and;
* forcing the LGH to close beds, reducing the operational capacity of surgical theatres and increasing emergency ward stress.

All this has occurred through a most mean and crafty way: by cutting annual hospital funding and forcing recent hospital CEOs to find so-called ‘efficiency dividends’ (another term for budget cuts) and forcing the LGH to carry forward any budget overruns into a new financial year.

Go on, deny it Lara.

In good economic times and bad, it is always necessary to keep costs as low as possible and to ensure any taxpayer-funded service is efficient.

However what we have witnessed over the last few years is a disgrace. I’ve spoken about it at length in Federal Parliament, public meetings and a rally attended by 5,000 people. We’ve fought together as a community with mixed results. Sometimes getting a reprieve, other times being blatantly lied to.

Remember Lara Giddings promise to a public meeting that “that not one dollar would be going to the south”. Days later she broke that promise – of the $40 million saved at the Mersey, the Labor government allocated just $4 million to Burnie, just $8 million to the LGH and $8 million to the Royal Hobart Hospital.

Meanwhile, fellow cabinet ministers David Bartlett and Michelle O’Byrne said nothing, did nothing for us. Federal MP Jodie Campbell didn’t bother doing anything about it either.

I commit to speaking up for our health services, especially the LGH. I commit to making sure our health system is managed efficiently, with a minimum of bureaucrats and a maximum of doctors and nurses.

I commit to never accepting anything less for the LGH than for it to remain a tertiary teaching hospital.

This is a very important issue for me.

I believe that Vision and energy for Tasmania will secure our LGH and unlock the potential for Tasmania’s health system.