Mandurah MP David Templeman nominates Peel health services as biggest challenge | ELECTION 2017

Not only would the growing and aging population require an expansion of the Peel Health Campus, which could be chaotically busy because of patient numbers, but the health industry could be a major source of jobs growth, Mr Templeman said.

“The health issue for me is crucial, because I not only see that as aligning services – local needs linked to local services – and Mark [McGowan] said in our Labor approach to health he wants to locate health services close to where people live, that’s got to happen in the Peel,” he said.

“But I also see that as a jobs opportunity.

“If we actually can start to say ‘no, services like breaking bloody arms will be treated here’, that means health services jobs are going to be consolidated here and expanded.”

Mr Templeman said the health challenges for the region also included services for older people.

“We already know that dementia is going to be one of the key health challenges for the future,” he said.

“I just think tourism and health and then the stuff that’s got to happen at Nambeelup is the comprehensive jobs package you’ve got to deliver and you’ve got to be strategic and we have never been strategic in health.”

He said the Peel Health Campus would require investment and that the decision by the Liberal government to extend the hospital operator’s contract for another five years put healthcare in the region in a “holding pattern”.

“All we’ve done is allow a hospital to be denigrated because how it was managed previously, but there’s not expansion there,” Mr Templeman said.

“That hospital needs expansion. Can we wait five years for the new contract? I don't think so.

“We have to gain community support to demand from whoever is in government a refocus on localised alignment of services. And that’s going to mean an increase in beds at the hospital, accident and emergency is going to have to be expanded.

“It’s chaotic there at the moment.”

Jobs would also be a focus if he was re-elected, he said. This would require innovative thinking on tourism opportunities.

“There has to be a reinvestment in terms of TAFE and trades,” he said.

“We have to embed a sense of excellence in customer service and business delivery. Everyone in Mandurah and the region is in tourism, not just what are perceived to be tourism businesses, but everyone is.

“If you’re serving at a check-out or if you’re at the service station, you’re all in tourism, you’re all ultimately selling the place.”

Mr Templeman said he would look at providing low impact tourism infrastructure in the city, for example on Boundary Island, a man made land mass in the Estuary.