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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-02-20 Daily Xml
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McLaren Vale and Districts War Memorial Hospital

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson) (15:39): I rise today to talk about the McLaren Vale and Districts War Memorial Hospital which for decades has been run by a dedicated band of volunteers who have done a terrific job. It was originally set up post World War II in serving the local community of McLaren Vale and districts such as McLaren Flat and Willunga but, as we know, those small hospitals and the sorts of services they can provide have changed over the decades. It was a place where many, many local people were born, including Tony Modra, the great number 6 for the Adelaide Crows. He was born at the McLaren Vale and Districts Hospital and so many of the people I know in our local area were born there.

Maternity services were wound up many, many years ago, as were a lot of the other medical procedures that you could have carried out at our local hospital. But the board kept going, kept trying to retain a viable hospital. Successive governments under John Hill, Jack Snelling and other health ministers, on both sides, would constantly meet with the board. The Liberal Party under minister Wade kept that funding going, but last year in May, the chair of the board, Mr Chris Overland—who has had a very extensive work history in the public health system—and his committee made the very tough decision to announce the closure of the hospital. They said:

The ageing hospital is not viable. We cannot employ enough staff due to workforce shortages to keep it running and that's why it will close on 30 June…There is just one proposal that would protect and preserve the site and replace the hospital with a key community service—the merger with the James Brown Memorial Trust/Kalyra, a not for profit charitable organisation helping older South Australians and people with a disability. There is NO other proposal that offers protection for the site.

That was an important thing for the community. This is, as I said, a volunteer committee that had worked so hard over so many years but they could see the writing on the wall: with new beds to be opened at Noarlunga Hospital, a lot of the government funded work that the hospital did would not be there in a few years' time. So they were preparing for the future by looking at all the options that were open to them for the site. Given the history of the site and how it was a community hospital, they wanted to make sure, like so many of us in the community did, that there would be a future use for the site, which was in keeping with what was intended when this hospital was first set up.

So Kalyra, which owns the aged-care village next door, wanted to expand, and they wanted to take over the kitchen, which not only provides for their residents but also for Meals on Wheels. So this was all set up with consultation and then, out of the blue, people who have never had anything to do with this hospital, never raised their hands to volunteer, never raised their hands to have a say in the future of the hospital, put up a bid on behalf of property developers.

Now, where do you think that is going to head? It is a prime site in the middle of town. They said, 'Oh, we can run a hospital there.' What we all know in the community, because we are not snoozers, we did not come down in the last shower, is that this was just an opportunity to get in and take this land and maybe develop it for housing in the future, for some other means.

There is a character called Henry Davis, who apparently is an Adelaide City councillor, who turned up at the meeting and did not say who he was until I yelled out, 'Can you please explain who you are?' He said he was a CFS volunteer. We had to get it out of him that he comes from Aldgate and that he had taken court action against these volunteers. That court action to date has cost the hospital, these volunteers, $80,000. I am not sure where this fellow is coming from, but he is not being helpful to a local community and a group of very good, hardworking volunteers.

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