As parents, my wife and I have been comforted to be greeted by professional staff when presenting with a sick or injured child at an accident and emergency department.
As a local, I cannot support the National Party’s plan to make patients, visitors and hospital staff pay for parking at the Tweed Hospital.
My position contrasts sharply with Nationals MP Geoff Provest who not only supports paid parking, managed by a private parking company that would profit at the expense of sick locals and their family members, but puts their case forward.
Let’s be clear, Geoff Provest’s own ‘Hospital Car Parking Fees Policy’ outlines parking charges of up to $18 per day to park at public hospitals. Even with a discount hospital staff will be forced to hand over more than $1000 per year to park while they look after the sick.
The ongoing master planning process is vital to ensuring that the Tweed Hospital can continue to provide services for the people of Tweed. It is insulting that the Nationals have identified increasing costs for the sick and their families as a central theme of that process.
Labor has a proud record of investing in services at Tweed Hospital, including the delivery of coronary care, mental health, oncology and renal dialysis wards, and all built without slugging locals with paid parking.
Rather than making it harder and more expensive to attend the Tweed Hospital Geoff Provest needs to abandon his paid parking policy, which will financially hurt all local people.
Ron Goodman, Labor Candidate for Tweed
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