By Steve Painter
WALLSEND — About four weeks ago, the NSW Greiner government succeeded in closing the doors of Wallsend Hospital after almost 100 years of service to the mining communities of the surrounding region. This must rate as one of the more stupid decisions of a government notorious for antisocial, heavy-handed decisions and anti-democratic attitudes.
With around 190 beds, Wallsend was one of the two or three biggest, best equipped and most efficient hospitals in NSW outside the Sydney region, and located in a rapidly growing residential area.
Angry local residents and trade unionists report that when they went to Sydney to confront the health minister, Ron Phillips, he initially thought Wallsend was somewhere near Wollongong. (It is on the fringe of Newcastle's western suburbs, 100-odd kilometres to the north.)
Phillips also described the hospital as run down and dilapidated. In fact, the largest part of it is only 13 years old and in very good condition. Even the old section, almost 100 years old, has been maintained to very high standards by the hospital's maintenance staff.
"Mr Phillips closed this hospital without even coming to see it", says Leslie Lambert, one of the former cleaners now on the picket line.
Wallsend, like all mining communities, takes its health services seriously. Mineworkers live constantly with the danger of serious injury and even death, and they want to know there are reliable health services nearby.
Wallsend Hospital was originally set up in 1892 with funds from mineworkers' levies and subscriptions, on land donated by the Newcastle-Wallsend Mining Co. Until the mid-1960s it was a community hospital supported by local donations and mineworkers' levies as well as funds from the state government, and run by a local community board. Many of the hospital's former staff are related to mineworkers.
Since the planned closure was announced mid-year, the district has been in uproar. Mineworkers, hospital staff and local residents have combined for two large protests, the largest a march of 15,000. The government has been presented with 60,000 signatures on protest petitions collected in the local area.
The closure was projected for the end of August, but staff held it off to the end of September by refusing to discharge patients to other hospitals. Eventually, however, the patients went home, and the government was able to close the doors, though even then only with the aid of heavy-handed threats against the nursing staff.
According to the hospital's former head nurse, Maureen Kime, the nurses were threatened with individual deregistration by the government board that controls their profession. This was after they met with local doctors to persuade them to keep admitting patients. Deregistration amounted to a threat to take away the nurses' ey must be registered to practice.
Since the closure, members of the staff, other trade unionists, pensioners, former patients and local residents have maintained a 24-hour picket line, determined to have the hospital reopened and to prevent equipment being taken out of it.
Much of the equipment already has labels on it, ready for transfer to other hospitals, but Hunter Area Health Service officials have been unable to locate some valuable items in the large buildings.
Many former staff members come to the picket line daily, even though they are still working (having been transferred to other hospitals) and most of the women have family responsibilities. In the evenings, picket duty is taken over by trade unionists from local mines and the building industry.
Even though the 450 staff have been relocated, their jobs are not secure. Most were sent to nearby John Hunter Hospital, a new, high-tech training hospital. But John Hunter has since announced 300 retrenchments, with a voluntary redundancy package open for two weeks before compulsory lay-offs start.
It seems transfer to John Hunter was just a roundabout way of getting many of the well-trained, efficient Wallsend staff onto the dole queue, a ridiculous and unnecessary waste of a valuable resource dressed up as a cost-saving measure.
In a bold bid to save the hospital, the mineworkers' union has applied to take it over and run it, renamed the Hunter Mineworkers' Hospital, as a joint venture with other partners, possibly including a private health fund.
UMFA northern districts secretary Ron Land explains that, even if this was not a permanent proposition, it would at least be a way of keeping the hospital open until a more socially responsible government comes to office.
The union became involved following requests from its lodges at Teralba and Boston, two mines in the area. Mineworkers from the nearby Gretley lodge have been staunch supporters of the picket line.
Barbara Hardes, a local resident on the picket, says even though there would be a private component to the mineworkers' proposal, that would be preferable to permanent closure or complete privatisation of the facility. "What we really want is a public, community hospital."
There is considerable justice in the proposal to hand control of the hospital back to members of the local community, who have contributed heavily to its upkeep for 100 years. In 1990 alone, the UMFA donated $130,000 to the hospital.
The union is presently investigating whether the hospital would be commercially viable, since it couldn't afford to subsidise large losses. Before its closure, Wallsend operated within its $21 million annual budget, a fact that ironically contributed to closure, says Maureen Kime. Because the hospital had no debts, it was relatively easy to close.
Kime says there is an obvious need for the hospital in the Newcastle region. The Hunter Area Health Service is cutting back because of budget constraints imposed by the state government, but facilities in the region are overcrowded.
The Royal Newcastle Hospital is two-thirds closed because of damage from the 1989 earthquake, and John Hunter Hospital is overworked to the point that it shuttles patients to other institutions, or to their homes with visits from nurses, even after major surgery. Wallsend was able to accommodate patients for longer periods of convalescence.