HANSARD
SITTING CALENDAR
SEARCH
LIVE BROADCAST
Hansard Dynamic Member Index
House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-06-05 Daily Xml
Contents
Xml

Regional Radiation Treatment Services

Ms PRATT (Frome) (11:41): I move:

That this house refers the eligible petition presented to the House of Assembly on 4 May 2023 from 16,159 residents of the Limestone Coast requesting the house to urge the government to commit the necessary funding to deliver radiation treatment services in the Limestone Coast and to ensure that the radiation treatment service is available in the way that ensures regional patients are able to access this service on the same basis as comparable services available in Adelaide or Warrnambool to the Social Development Committee.

As members of this chamber will be very familiar with, we have spent over the last couple of years many minutes adding up to hours, I am sure, debating the virtues of the need for radiation therapy services to be funded and to be implemented in regional South Australia.

The petition tells an extraordinary story. This has been a community-led campaign with a working group really made up of the most fabulous people from Mount Gambier and the Limestone Coast. Most of them are cancer survivors. Many of them are men who have been living with and continue to live with prostate cancer who found that the absence of radiation therapy services in the Limestone Coast was the perfect opportunity to bring that plea and that call to the government.

Leading up to the last election in 2022, the first part of this process had been achieved by the federal member for Barker, Tony Pasin, in securing from the federal Coalition government at the time $4 million in federal funding that was meant to partner and complement the next stage required by the state government of the day. We have put to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing an open invitation to put South Australia, to put the Limestone Coast forward for a radiation oncology health program grant. By putting a region forward for consideration by the federal health department, we would like to think that would then be approved and unlock the Limestone Coast as a designated area for this service.

As I said, the campaign to bring attention to this requirement, to this gap in services, has been ably led by a number of residents and cancer survivors in the Limestone Coast. They formed a working group and it was through their advocacy, their passion, their leadership and their persistence that they sought to collect as many signatures as they did. While the motion before the house formally recognises that 16,159 residents in person signed the petition, we know that collectively with the online petition the swell of support went up, with over 20,000 South Australians calling for this.

South Australia remains the only state or territory without regional services offering radiation therapy treatment. South Australia remains the only state or territory without a regional radiotherapy service. That is why the opposition and residents of the Limestone Coast remain committed to the opportunity that is before the minister to put any region forward, but let it be the Limestone Coast for the Radiation Oncology Health Program Grant (ROHPG).

I think the reluctance to do that opens up deeper questions about the government's commitment to investing in regional health services and the regional health workforce. Whether there is any money left in the health budget will remain to be seen when it is handed down today.

Part of the journey of the working group in the Limestone Coast, once the petitions had been tabled with the house, was then to unlock further attention from the Legislative Review Committee. What was triggered was a feasibility study undertaken in part by the Limestone Coast Local Health Network. I want to speak to that briefly today because I am optimistic that this motion will receive some support to be referred to a committee. I read from page 104 of the final conclusion summary of the feasibility study:

It is in principle possible to establish a safe and quality radiation therapy service in Mount Gambier in association with a service provider operating at another site, provided it is adequately resourced and risks effectively managed. The benefits to the local community include social, financial, physical, and mental health, including improved cancer outcomes.

The document, on page 5 as part of an executive summary, concluded that moving forward there were opportunities for a radiation treatment centre and services to be appropriately established in the South-East. It says:

If a centre were to be established at this time, or in the future (within the next ten years), it would require political support, significant top-up funding and a well-executed staff recruitment and retention strategy…In addition, the region will need to be declared a priority area (by the State government) for the purposes of the ROHPGS. There is evidence of this political support and top-up funding in comparable regional locations in Australia.

Population modelling completed by the Study indicates that the population levels of the Limestone Coast, in isolation, will not be sufficient to adequately support a linac—

a linear accelerator—

until the turn of the century. To generate sufficient demand in the short term other populations would be required to travel to Mount Gambier for RT services.

That spoke volumes to me for a number of reasons. The reference to the requirement for political support can only be pointing to the current government, because the political support from the opposition has been there from day one. It exists within the community at the local political level and it certainly exists in here from the parliamentary team today. So it can only be that the report is referring to a lack of political will by the government and a lack of political will by the Minister for Health and Wellbeing to just put something on the table: just put us forward.

If it is not going to be the Limestone Coast, then let the government make an argument for another regional area of South Australia, because it cannot be that we continue to be leapfrogged by every other state and territory that, in this time of two years of dithering, have continued to attract support from service providers like Icon and GenesisCare, who do speak to the positive opportunities for retaining a workforce, recruiting, being competitive and for it being sustainable.

Communities like Wagga Wagga, Griffith and Alice Springs have these services, and currently online for the HPG now we see Cairns and Tamworth approved. This document is saying that other comparable regions across the nation can support a service like this. Why should the residents of Mount Gambier and Limestone Coast be penalised for the total of the population being the reason why our government is not prepared to fight for any region in the state? This is the biggest city that we have. We do not have a Wagga. We do not have a Cairns. Really what this document is saying is, based on population tallies, we are going to have to wait another 10 years before a government should consider applying for the Health Program Grant, and I find that totally unacceptable.

There is before the house a motion that the work of the volunteers and cancer survivors in Mount Gambier be honoured through the petition of 16,000 signatures, and we put the motion to the house today that it be received by the Social Development Committee.

Mr BELL (Mount Gambier) (11:51): I rise to make a brief contribution to this motion and really pay my gratitude to the 16,000 people who took the time to sign the petition for radiation therapy services to be increased in Mount Gambier. It has been a very complicated journey in terms of part funding coming from the federal government and then obviously the request from the state government to fund the implementation of the machine, with Icon putting their hand up to say they can effectively provide this service and provide it well to the residents not just of Mount Gambier but the Limestone Coast as a catchment area and, of course, into western Victoria.

Funding was available. It had a provider, and still has a provider, who was willing and able to staff and had the expertise to provide radiation therapy for our residents. Really, this is one of those topics that, when you sit around the table talking to the committee members who have been driving this at a grassroots level and hearing the stories of either a son or a daughter or a loved one, or in fact themselves, having to undertake radiation therapy in Adelaide, the time away from their support networks, from work, the costs involved, you really start getting an understanding of the impact of cancer and the need for this service in our region. Mount Gambier, being the largest city outside of Adelaide, is ideally located.

We have traversed this for a long time. That funding was quarantined, and I do thank the state health minister at the time for quarantining that funding that came from the federal government for a period of time. I share the disappointment of many residents that that funding has been reallocated into the hospital and not used for this specific purpose. I do want to thank the committee members who have given their time to keep pushing this. It is something that we will keep alive. Certainly, 16,000 signatures signals a very strong commitment from our community for this cause.

Mr ODENWALDER (Elizabeth) (11:54): I move to amend the motion as follows:

(a) Replace 'Social Development Committee' with 'Economic and Finance Committee'.

(b) Following 'Economic and Finance Committee' insert 'incorporating prior hearings held and evidence received by the Legislative Review Committee in regard to this petition'.

Amendment carried; motion as amended carried.

PARLIAMENTARY BUSINESS
MEMBERS
GET INVOLVED
ABOUT PARLIAMENT
VISIT
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
CONTACT