Mr JOHN COBB (7:44 PM) —In the last budget the Minister for Health and Ageing put through $72½ million to go towards six radiation centres—oncology centres—for country Australia. I congratulate her on that. It is an enormous measure and it is one that is very needed. The electorate of Parkes, which is over one-third of New South Wales, is over 1,000 kilometres long and close to 800 kilometres wide. As I said, this measure delivers to over one-third of New South Wales. There are people in the electorate of Parkes who live up to 1,500 kilometres away from the nearest radiation centre where they can receive treatment.

On 6 September this year the national report called A vision for radiotherapy in Australia was released. It is a very good report. It acknowledges the fact that country Australia needs more centres. It acknowledges that where people live furthest away from treatment centres deaths from cancer are at their highest. It also says we need a radiation centre on the Central Coast of New South Wales, and I accept that. There are a lot of people in that region and a lot of them do live a long way from either Newcastle or the Gold Coast. But the fact remains that most of New South Wales is a long way west of there.

A radiation centre needs a city that can support such a centre. There is a lot of expensive equipment involved and it does need a medical centre. Dubbo can provide that centre. We have people in places as far west as Hillston and Cobar and further north through Bourke and Brewarrina who currently have to travel to Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane to get treatment. There are six radiation centres going to country Australia, and I feel certain that at least two of those must go to country New South Wales. Dubbo is the obvious place for one of them. At this early stage I have already had any amount of submissions from throughout the electorate of Parkes totally committed to showing why that should happen.

It is said we need 250,000 people to support such a centre, even acknowledging the fact mentioned in the report that in country Australia we will have to do things because they are needed, not necessarily because the right amount of people are there to support them. Southern New South Wales is well catered for in Wagga and in Albury-Wodonga. The fact is that Dubbo is far and away the most obvious place away from the north coast to put such a centre. It will pull people all the way from Bourke, Cobar, Hillston and Brewarrina to Dubbo, plus anybody as far east as Mudgee and Orange. It is much easier for them to travel 100 or 150 kilometres west to Dubbo than it is for them to travel all the way to Sydney. We have an enormous need. We have people with the will to make it succeed. We have an enormous part of New South Wales that will pull far more than 250,000 people and make it a lot easier than it currently is for many of those people who currently travel to Melbourne, Sydney or the Gold Coast.