PM: Just let me say a few things about how pleased I am to be here in Rocky and here at the Rockhampton Base Hospital with Kirsten Livermore, who's a long-standing friend and colleague of mine who I work with closely in Canberra.
It's really important that we deliver better health and better hospital services to all Australians, and that includes people in regional Australia and major regional centres like here in Rocky, and that's why I'm pleased today to be here to announce that we are investing $67 million to establish a comprehensive cancer care centre here at Rockhampton Base Hospital.
This is a big investment. This is a lot of money, but in a practical sense what's it mean? It means that we're going to be able to ensure that we have the commissioning of two radiotherapy bunkers, the construction of a third bunker, 16 chemotherapy chairs. This will enable us to, of course, provide more comprehensive cancer care here.
The bunkers at Rockhampton will allow Queensland Health to install two linear accelerators, resulting in additional radiotherapy services for cancer patients here as well.
You see, when you look at this community and how many people use this great hospital, the basic question is this - why do I always have to travel to Brisbane for everything? We hear this message. That is why our message to the nation is we need a new National Health and Hospital Network, funded nationally by the Australian Government, delivered locally by local hospital networks.
You folk here know how to run your hospital, that's my experience, right round the country. What you need is better funding support to do it. You also need critical additional investment when it comes to cancer care.
(The video related to this transcript is available from the Multimedia section of this website.)