LNP Government Must Face Moura Residents

Media Release.

Shadow Health Minister Jo-Ann Miller says the Premier Campbell Newman, Health Minister Lawrence Springborg and local member Deputy Premier Jeff Seeney must face residents of Moura at tonight’s public meeting on the future of their hospital.

“It’s disgraceful that the LNP leadership team is hiding behind regional health boards and do not have the guts to face the people of Moura themselves to tell them why they are slashing their health care services,” Mrs Miller said.

“In addition, I do not know why Mr Springborg continues to draw a pay cheque of $6,000 a week when he scurries from scrutiny by passing the buck — or 6,000 bucks — to the health boards and refuses to do the hard work expected of a Health Minister.

“Moura is a growing mining region, with growing health care needs, it makes no sense for this callous LNP Government to completely remove hospital services from this town,” Mrs Miller said.

“This LNP Government has continually shown they will stop at nothing to cut health services and jobs from regional communities, while cowering behind the health and hospital boards as an excuse.

“Unfortunately, we fear that Moura Hospital is just the beginning and many more regional hospitals will be closed by this Brisbane-centric LNP Government,” she said.

Member for Rockhampton Bill Byrne said the Moura town meeting protesting the closure of the hospital followed revelations in recent days that the LNP Government was cutting jobs and services from the Central Queensland and Wide Bay Burnett Health Service Boards.

“The Premier and Health Minister’s continued failure to answer questions about their slashing of health services and jobs is becoming a joke in regional Queensland,” Mr Byrne said.

“No-one swallows their rubbish about these being decisions of the health and hospital boards. When the boards make a decision it is a decision of the LNP government pure and simple, and the Premier and Health Minister are responsible for it.

“In addition it was Mr Springborg who imposed cuts of $13 million on the Central Queensland Hospital and Health Board with more cuts to come in the next three years.

“The people of Central Queensland want to hear why health services are being scrapped and jobs slashed from their elected representatives.

“If the Premier, Deputy Premier and Health Minister fail to show-up to the community meeting in Moura they are nothing more than cowards, who don’t have to guts to justify their own callous decisions,” he said.

Mrs Miller said LNP MPs also should explain why their party organisation should make money out of job cuts and service reductions in regional hospital and health services.

“When job cuts are being announced at hospitals across regional Queensland, LNP MPs should explain why the LNP is turning their government’s mass sackings and savage cuts to frontline services into a cash cow,” Mrs Miller said. (See attached PDF)

“The LNP is arranging an event on February 5 at a five-star hotel in Brisbane to brag about its job cuts and service cuts and to detail plans for outsourcing and privatising more jobs and services.

“While the Premier and the Minister for Health Cuts and Closures, Lawrence Springborg, are cutting health services, they endorse the LNP’s plan to profit from their decisions by selling tickets to their party policy launch at $200 a head and close to $2,000 for tables of 10.

“I am sure this will not impress the people of Central Queensland and the many other communities across the state that are losing frontline health workers, having hospital and health services closed or scaled down, or losing nursing home beds.

“The LNP money-making event is an insult to those who have lost or will lose their jobs in hospitals and health services.

“It is an insult to local communities losing frontline health services, an insult to elderly Queenslanders losing their government nursing homes, and an insult to their families,” she said.