We here in Orange are quite lucky, benefiting from a major hospital which encompasses an array of specialty medical services.

However, even our capable services here at Orange have been placed under additional strain with COVID-19, influenza and an increasing number of referrals from across the region.

As good as it is here in Orange, it hasn't all been rosy; It took quite an arm wrestle with the NSW Government and the Western NSW Local Health District (LHD) to reinstate inpatient palliative care services, which they removed from our suite of hospital services when it was relocated from the old hospital site in the city to the new hospital at the Bloomfield campus.

Although the Government and the LHD eventually relented, delivering the inpatient palliative services we'd long been fighting for, the reasoning the LHD clung to for not previously reinstating inpatient palliative services was that people preferred to die at home.

However, as most of us now know, the reality is that despite people's wishes, they often require specialist inpatient palliative care in their final weeks and days.

The community of Parkes is expected to boom with the future delivery of the inland rail hub and development of the Special Activation Precinct.

These projects will attract the establishment of business and create many local jobs in the process. Couple this with three mining enterprises in the district and the prediction for solid population growth in Parkes is fairly-well guaranteed.

In late 2015, a new state-of-the-art hospital was completed at Parkes. One of the key features of the new hospital was a maternity ward, supported with obstetrics, anaesthetics and midwifery services.

Following the retirement of several local GP-Obstetricians/Anaesthetists, in 2019 the LHD closed Parkes Hospital's maternity services as they deemed the costs for locum doctors required to continue the service to be untenable.

The Government's and LHD's solution were to replace the Parkes Hospital's maternity ward with a midwife-only birthing model. Their reasoning was that most births often only require midwife care. That's fine when all goes to plan, but childbirth is inherently risky for mother and child - and it can often turn into an emergency without notice.

Midwives are essential to mother and child - before, during and after the birth however, they don't possess specialist skills often necessary in a birth, particularly in an emergency, such as a caesarean or postpartum haemorrhage.

Expectant mothers have since had to either go to Forbes Hospital, by appointment, or make the harrowing dash to either Dubbo or Orange hospitals, in the case of premature labour or high-risk pregnancy.

There have been expectant mothers who've not been able to make it all the way to Orange and have given birth in their cars at the roadside.

In the 21st Century, this isn't good enough. Many health services in regional NSW have contracted or centralised, seemingly going backwards. The removal of a fully functioning maternity service is the antithesis to growth and progress - particularly for a community such as Parkes which is clearly going to grow and require such services.

The ripple effect is that Orange Hospital is now having to cater for additional maternity workloads, and even ancillary or support services such as Ronald McDonald House are under strain with increased visitation from families who've required to stay in Orange for medical services.

I'm fed-up with hearing excuses the Government and their bureaucrats make when closing or scaling-down health services. Predictably, their solutions are driven by efficiencies, cost-savings. This approach has seen tragic outcomes, such as the death of a patient at the Gulgong Hospital who was treated virtually via Telehealth by a doctor who was hundreds of miles away.

In their recent 2022-23 budget, the Government touted funding for a 10,000-strong workforce boost to the public health sector. Rest assured, I'll be asking for our share of resources to sufficiently reinstate and maintain accessible public health services across the electorate, and holding the government to account.