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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-02-08 Daily Xml
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Schubert Electorate

Mrs HURN (Schubert) (15:24): I rise to speak on some disappointing news about the services that will be provided at the Gumeracha District Soldiers' Memorial Hospital in my electorate of Schubert. The Gumeracha Medical Practice as well as the Lobethal Medical Centre in years gone by have been servicing patients up at the Gumeracha hospital for many, many decades. It was with some disappointment that I opened a press release issued by the Gumeracha Medical Practice, where they noted, 'Gum Medical ends century-long service to Gumeracha District Soldiers' Memorial Hospital after failed contract negotiations.'

I am going to quote Dr Chris Withnall, who is the owner of Gumeracha Medical. He said, 'It is with deep regret that our private medical practice cannot continue to look after our local hospital in the face of bureaucratic indifference.' He then went on to say that the level of disregard was proved by the fact that it was not until a day before the contract expired that a meeting was arranged to negotiate. In that meeting the doctors were told that their service was too expensive and an insignificant contribution compared to all of the major projects elsewhere in the network.

I have to say that there is nothing insignificant about the service that the doctors at Gumeracha Medical provide up at the Gumeracha hospital. I frankly believe that the government should have shown a lot more respect to the doctors at Gumeracha Medical by coming to the negotiating table much sooner. The contract that I am of course referring to is how GPs operate with the hospital in Gumeracha, so I think that is particularly disappointing. We know that Gumeracha has had some difficulties over the past few years in relation to their health services at the local level. Obviously, there was the temporary closure of the emergency department initially through COVID-19. That was a huge concern for many locals not just in Gumeracha but more broadly across the Torrens Valley area.

I would urge the government—and the government really has a very big task ahead of itself—to ensure that the LHN actually stumps up and provides those doctors so that there is not yet another freefall, if you like, of services in my local community.

The situation as it stands at the ED in particular is one which still concerns many locals in my community. If you are under the age of 10, you cannot go and get your stitches done up at Gumeracha Medical. There are a whole host of things that you cannot actually get done at the Gumeracha Medical Practice, and I think that is something that is particularly disappointing. Having those health services closer to home in a regional community is so critically important. Now the only option that people have in Gumeracha and beyond in my northern part of the Adelaide Hills is to either head to the Mount Barker hospital or to head down the hill to go to the hospitals down the hill.

I think that is really, really disappointing. It is part of the reason why, as an opposition, we have been pushing for there to be incentives on the table to attract and retain frontline health workers. We know that it is such a difficult time right across the nation, right across the world indeed, to get healthcare workers, but every other state is competitive with incentives on the table except here in South Australia.

I genuinely worry that if we do not come to the party in that regard services in my local community will just continue to diminish, and that is not something that we can afford to occur. I urge the government to really fast-track an action plan so that there can be doctors up at the Gumeracha hospital. It is something that they need, and it is something that they deserve.

One of the other issues that I would like to raise in the short time that I have left is on behalf of locals who are living in Springton, Mount Pleasant and Eden Valley. They came to me towards the end of last year and the start of this year with some pretty significant frustrations about the power outages that they were having. I think that is entirely reasonable. Locals understand, particularly in regional communities, that often there are storms and often there are trees that interrupt power, but to have so many interruptions that are unplanned I think is a great source of frustration. I am pleased that SA Power Networks have now written back to say that more investment will be made to try to make that power a little bit more reliable, but there is still a long way to go, and I will keep fighting on that front.

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