Coffs Harbour Health Campus Parking
| About this Item | |
| Speakers | Fraser Mr Andrew |
| Business | Private Members Statements, PRIV |
COFFS HARBOUR HEALTH CAMPUS PARKING
Page: 851
Mr ANDREW FRASER (Coffs Harbour—The Assistant Speaker): [3.42 p.m.]: I raise the issue of parking at the Coffs Harbour health campus. While the health campus was being built and when it opened in 2001 I had several discussions with the then Minister for Health, Minister Knowles, in which I said that as he had reserved some regrowth forest on the southern side of the site when he was planning Minister parking on the new campus would be somewhat limited. I suggested that the Smiths' house at the front of the site should be purchased for future development or parking. The house was situated on roughly five acres and could have been bought at a bargain-basement price of about $500,000, but the Minister failed to do so. The site was purchased by a group of local doctors who are building a private health care centre that will complement the health campus. However, traffic congestion will further increase.
The builders arrive on site early and they park around and near the campus. At the back of the site is the North Coast Cancer Institute, a fantastic rural health facility, which also has cancer care units for visiting out-of-town patients and their families. Literally hundreds of people who work at the campus require parking for their vehicles. The ambulance station is also located on the campus site. It is a great campus and on many occasions in this House I have raised how stressed and overworked the staff are, especially the medical staff, nurses and doctors. The present problem is that medical staff now have to park off campus. Security is not the best and often staff have to park in an industrial estate across the Pacific Highway near a dangerous intersection. Recently nurses have told me that they have had to park in spaces at the emergency department because they do not feel safe going across the highway when they finish their late-night shifts.
My office and I receive complaints almost daily from people attending the health campus either for day surgery or to visit relatives and friends who are patients because they are not able to find parking spaces. In fact, each time I attend the campus for any reason I drive my four-wheel drive ute because I can climb the gutter and park on the grassed area. Unfortunately, after all the recent rain much of the grassed areas is boggy. An incredible number of people are parking on those areas anyway. Anyone who read or saw the local media after a couple of recent floods would have seen that the car park was flooded. This resulted because the drain on the southern side, which was identified in the flood study after the site was purchased, was never deepened, widened or concreted as recommended; council has never addressed the matter.
I have written to council and other departments to investigate improving the site drainage to ensure that the areas used currently as overflow parking will not be boggy for nurses, doctors and visitors to park in. Unfortunately, nothing has been done. I ask the Minister for Health to call for a report on opportunities to increase the parking area and improve access to the site. When the hospital was planned the agreement with council was for a road to be opened on the eastern side of the site running back to the Marshalls' estate, which is a sporting area, to enable unrestricted access to the hospital for ambulances attending an accident on the highway or if floodwaters cut off access via the highway. I appeal to the Minister to work with Coffs Harbour City Council and try to reach a resolution to improve the campus parking.
The campus is used comprehensively not just by the residents of Coffs Harbour but also at times by people from as far south as Port Macquarie for cancer care, and by people from Grafton for cardiac and cancer care. It is imperative that a solution is achieved urgently; otherwise I fear there will be problems not only with nurses, visitors and patients but also with people trying to cross the Pacific Highway.
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