Mr Robinson’s health policy 

Creation of a new medical school 

Any politician representing rural communities is up against two competing equities in the health system – providing a fair share of health services, as well as distributing a fair share of health dollars.

What rural communities should be able to rely on, without any issue, are the health services typically available in most suburban locations in Sydney: general physicians, dentists, psychologists, physios.

Everyone one of us is born and many of us have babies. Everyone one of us eventually dies.

Rural communities should all have excellent access to the safe delivery of babies for child and mother alike. Elderly folk should enjoy their final years, without fuss of moving, for nursing or palliative care.

Hospitals – plenty of money everywhere, but Murray?

I don’t believe in spending health dollars on the proposed inquiry into decisions of Murrumbidgee Health.

I know there is room for management improvement, based on my own personal experience.

Driving between the north and south of our state, the amount of investment in new hospitals, in NSW’s Central West and Eastern Riverina, is eye popping. But not here in Murray. Enough said.

New Ideas for Murray-Darling Medical School

I appreciate that health services I’ve mentioned above are primarily a Federal concern.

You may have heard of proposals for a Murray-Darling Medical School. The concept, while disputed by some key city university medical professors, is that if med students from the bush study in the bush, rather than relocate to live six years in the city to become a doctor, they’re more likely to stay in the bush.

You don’t need to be a professor to appreciate the current sense logic. Quite straight forward.

The one flaw I see in the proposal is that involves an expansion of the existing medical school located at Bendigo, to similar campuses in other rural cities like Wagga Wagga and Bathurst.

In effect, the current proposal is to locate campuses, in what are rural cities. Does that not defeat the point?

What I will push hard if you elect me to Parliament, is asking relevant decision influencers, whether if the Murray Darling Basin Plan is to work, its next campus should be located not in ‘virtual cities’ such as Wagga Wagga or Bathurst, but in a town of size which typically struggles with GP numbers.

That means of course students study and live, in a community of the size, we need them to stay in. The important issue here is not the location of such the campus (I have a particular site in Deniliquin in mind). Or indeed whether a campus is located in our state seat.

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