Brisbane Olympics 2032: Billions spent as regional health lags

A Queensland crossbench MP says the state’s Olympics splurge has highlighted our yawning gap in health services.

Is Brisbane’s lavish Olympic bid a costly folly that will divide the state into the haves and have-nots?

The son of an elderly woman who waited in agony for more than four hours for an ambulance after she broke her hip thinks so.

So does Robbie Katter, whose sprawling north Queensland electorate of Traeger has many health service shortfalls.

The elderly woman’s son, Jack, made a good point when he said the Premier was chortling about spending $1 billion at the Gabba at the very time there were no available ambulances to take his 93-year-old mum to hospital.

“We have the Premier raving on about grandstand seats for a for a future event, but we can’t fund ambulances and beds,” he said.

Katter’s Australian Party state leader Robbie Katter has echoed the disgust of a man whose 93-year-old mother was left waiting for an ambulance for four hours with a broken hip.

Katter told Parliament recently that Julia Creek Hospital in the state’s northwest shut at night and downgraded – despite a $7 million upgrade.

Queensland Health could not find the staff, he said.

Health services in the north were poor.

“The dialysis unit in Mount Isa is a disgrace,’’ he told the House.

“It looks like downtown Mumbai.

“We are struggling to keep things alive. I do not want to hear about billions of dollars going to a pitch for the Olympic Games.’’

This week Katter described the Olympic bid as “gluttony of the highest order that will further entrench neglect of Queensland’s regions’’.

He makes a valid point.

And it is something for our Olympic promoters and their gushing media cheer squad to ponder.

Originally published as Brisbane Olympics 2032: Billions spent as regional health lags