My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Health, and the action I seek is to urgently fund the long-awaited Western District Health Service Hamilton Base Hospital redevelopment.
This is a hospital that I actually worked at some time ago, and it is blight on the Allan Labor government, really, that the emergency department is essentially in the same state as it was when I worked there around 17 years ago now, quite a long time ago.
The emergency department in particular I just want to focus on, because this is a critical area of every hospital. It is where you have ambulances bringing in critical patients. It is where there are often life or death decisions. There are people who are coming in because they are in labour. They might be kids who have fractured their shoulder or their collarbone or rolled their ankle at home or had another accident at home.
It can also, of course, be where people come in when they are critically unwell with a terminal illness or needing treatment, and there are other aspects as well. We see people with mental health issues who are often waiting in emergency departments for an exceptionally long period of time. We have police bringing in people who are inebriated on drugs or alcohol, who are also needing to be cared for in this environment.
At Hamilton Base Hospital what we see is a very, very aged piece of infrastructure. The rooms are pokey. There are areas that are simply separated by a curtain where you have to walk through one curtained area to get into the next curtained area. It offers no privacy, no respect for the patients. It certainly does not support the fabulous team at Western District Health Service in Hamilton to provide the best possible quality of care. It does not provide the best safety or security for patients or for staff. It does not provide the best clinical outcomes, and it certainly is not the most appropriate space for mental health care during critical times, when the hospital is not necessarily the best place for people to access that mental health support anyway.
The people of Western District have waited long enough. The need for action is immediate, and it is absolutely undeniable. I therefore ask the minister to make a clear and public funding commitment to fund the Hamilton Base Hospital redevelopment, set out the defined stages of the project from planning through to construction and completion, and provide a specific timeframe for when the government will make its final investment decision. Our communities deserve certainty and they deserve it now. They need a firm commitment, a transparent road map and a clear date by which this long overdue redevelopment will be approved and delivered.