OPTIONS for the future of Footscray’s public dental clinic will be released next week after the success of a parliamentary motion pushing for their release.
It is four months since a taskforce led by Liberal MP Andrew Elsbury presented a report on the future of dental services at the Western Region Community Health Centre (WRCHC) to Health Minister David Davis.
Mr Davis must table the report by next Tuesday.
Western suburbs Greens MP Colleen Hartland, who put the motion, said the release would allow an open discussion about the service’s future. “Some of the equipment is so old it should be in a museum,” she said.
“It has taken a lot of neglect from both the old sides of politics to get the clinic into such a poor state that we could lose dental services for our children in the area.”
The Weekly has reported the Geelong Road clinic is hampered by equipment failure, poor lighting, lack of on-site sterilisation and narrow corridors.
Mr Elsbury said the report covered a lot of the issues facing the WRCHC as it struggled to serve patients with complex needs. “The work the Western Region Health Centre does in providing this dental health service is critical as it’s able to deliver what so many people in the western suburbs need, which is good and proper dental care,” he said.
“We have made a broad range of recommendations in the form of ‘if A happens, B will occur because of this action’. [The report] shows that if little is done, little result will come of it, but if a great amount of work is done, much better outcomes will be achieved.”
Mr Elsbury criticised Labor for waiting-list blowouts and said the government wouldn’t have prepared the report if it wasn’t taking the issue seriously.
“We can’t just roll up to Footscray, bowl over a building and helicopter in a new building. It just can’t be done that way. We have gone through options that will provide services for the term in which a new facility will be built.”
Mr Davis said Labor’s last budget had included a “half-baked proposal” that had been knocked back by the expenditure review committee. “The first base report is completed; we will take further steps beyond that, and I will make announcements about those in the forthcoming period.”
