SA Liberals leader Vincent Tarzia promises radiotherapy service for Mount Gambier

Weeks after a proposed radiotherapy service for Mount Gambier was quashed, opposition leader Vincent Tarzia has announced a Liberal government would introduce one.

A future Liberal state government would introduce a radiotherapy service for the Mount Gambier region, opposition leader Vincent Tarzia announced today.

The ambitious regional initiative comes just weeks after the state government ruled out the service in the state’s second biggest city, leaving many residents needing such treatment facing trips to Adelaide.

More than 16,000 people signed a petition in May 2023 calling for the delivery of radiation

treatment services in the Limestone Coast and the decision left many bitterly disappointed.

Chair of the Limestone Coast Radiation Treatment Working Group, Lachlan Haynes, said at the time: “We feel we put forward a very strong argument and basically were left not only very disappointed but certainly feeling like ourselves and the region are second-class citizens.”

Lachlan Haynes the Chair of The Radiation Working Group Limestone Coast at Parliament House with supporters and 16,000 signatures for a South East radiation treatment centre. Picture: Mark Brake

Mr Tarzia said cancer sufferers in the Limestone Coast now are forced to drive up to a 10 hour round trip to undergo critical radiation treatment, with an emotional as well as financial cost.

“South Australia is the only state to not deliver radiotherapy services regionally,” Mr Tarzia said.

“We will ensure equitable access to health care in our regions, starting with radiation therapy services for cancer suffers in the Limestone Coast.

“Your postcode should not determine your health outcomes. As the party for the regions, we want to reduce the barriers to health care for regional South Australians.”

Opposition leader Vincent Tarzia. Picture: Dean Martin

Liberal MLC Ben Hood.

Mount Gambier-based Liberal MLC Ben Hood said similar service models are provided interstate in towns such as Mildura, Griffith and Warrnambool.

“Yet the Malinauskas Labor government is happy to leave cancer suffers in the Limestone Coast to travel interstate to seek critical treatment – at their own cost and far from their families and support network,” he said.

Opposition spokeswoman for regional health, Penny Pratt said: “Labor told South Australians to vote for them like their lives depended on it. Yet when it comes to providing life saving cancer treatment, they have turned their backs on the Limestone Coast.”

However Health Minister Chris Picton blasted the plan as “as vacuous and shambolic as the first two weeks of Vincent Tarzia’s chaotic Liberal leadership.”

“Vincent Tarzia doesn’t know the first thing about health care, the Limestone Coast or the contents of the feasibility study,” he said.

“His fly-in-fly-out announcement is not worth the paper it is written on. Vincent needs to outline how he will get the workforce despite the independent feasibility study raising this as the key risk.

“Vincent Tarzia and the Liberals are ignoring the deliberations of the Limestone Coast Local Health Network Governing Board – the same Governing Board established by the Liberals to make such decisions locally and not from Adelaide.”

Mr Picton said capital works in regional health as well as operating budgets for country health networks have increased under Labor.

In late July, SA Health announced an independent feasibility study found establishing a radiation therapy service is not a safe, sustainable or financially viable option.

Officials said independent consultants looked at private radiation therapy services operating elsewhere in regional Australia and found that using a fly- in fly-out work force was a compromise to the optimum continuum of care available in metropolitan hospitals and centres.

As a result local health officials announced they would pursue changes to cancer treatment service, reduced requirements for travel and establishment of dedicated local cancer leadership, as well advocate for adequate compensation for travel.

Limestone Coast Local Health Network chair Andrew Saies said at the report’s release: “Patient safety and clinical care must be our priority and the study found extreme work force risks in the proposed service.

“Further, those risks cannot be mitigated by simply spending money – care is more important than convenience.”

Originally published as SA Liberals leader Vincent Tarzia promises radiotherapy service for Mount Gambier