And another public holiday is no help

THE ‘land of the long weekend’ strikes again!

Sure, everyone welcomes a day off but if it wasn’t enough to have a public holiday on the day before the AFL Grand Final (for goodness sake), the problem for business and the health system has been further compounded by the calling of a day of mourning for the late Queen Elizabeth II.

We should mourn our monarch of 70 years. She has contributed exemplary service, from taking on an army role in the war, to her support of people and events in Australia, a country she loves, over many years.

Whether we needed a public holiday to honour her service? It’s doubtful.

What the State Government should have done first was consult the health service before agreeing to an extra public holiday and then called them both off for a couple of years as a gesture towards reducing the massive elective surgery list. 

As if the health system wasn’t in enough trouble with deaths directly attributable to a failure to properly resource the Triple 0 emergency call service and now we hear that on-call, local doctors will not be available to support the Urgent Care Centre at the Leongatha Hospital afterhours.

This situation needs to be better explained to the local community.

There may be good reasons why the local doctors have been forced to take this action and why Gippsland Southern Health Service isn’t bringing in contract doctors. Maybe it’s a good use of time, money and technology but we’d like to hear these questions addressed.