Box Hill Hospital: lack of parking

Hansard: 18 September 2007 ASSEMBLY

Mr CLARK (Box Hill) — I raise with the Minister for Health the difficulties and costs of car parking for patients, visitors and staff at the Box Hill Hospital. I ask the minister to take up with Eastern Health the particular difficulties faced by those who spend long periods at the hospital visiting sick children or other family members, with a view to the hospital making special provision for visitors in this situation. I have recently had drawn to my attention the case of a young couple who incurred car parking expenses of around $120 a week while maintaining a continuous vigil with a premature 34-week baby who was being cared for in a humidicrib.

There was no practical option to enable this couple to use public transport, as they were often arriving at the hospital early in the morning or leaving late at night, or the husband was coming directly to the hospital from work. This couple faced not only the cost but also the difficulty of having to leave a child in order to feed a parking meter or to move their car. Of course it is not just this single couple who are affected; there are around 20 to 25 infants undergoing similar levels of care at the hospital at any one time, according to what I am told.

As well as infants, there are many other seriously ill patients with close family members maintaining a continuous vigil at their side.

Car parking has been very limited at Box Hill Hospital for a long time and has been dogged by years of delay under the Bracks and Brumby governments. A proposal to build a major new car park for the hospital was on the table at the time the government came to office. That went through extensive delays when the then Treasurer required that the process of constructing a new hospital be put to tender under Partnerships Victoria, a process which fell through due to lack of adequate bids, and then nothing further was done by the government. The construction of a car park along with the full redevelopment of the hospital has dragged on for some considerable time. The 2002 redevelopment did not proceed.

Prior to the last election there was the promise of a complete redevelopment of the hospital.

Funding has been provided for a preliminary stage of that, which involves the construction of some additional car parking space. However, if the full redevelopment proceeds, the current car parking spaces on the existing hospital site will be lost unless and until they are replaced as part of the hospital redevelopment or separately.

In any event, even assuming that at long last adequate off-street parking is constructed for the hospital, there is still going to be the issue of the cost of car parking and the difficulty of arrangements for patients in the situation of the couple I described. I therefore believe it would be appropriate for the hospital to see whether provision can be made for ongoing off-street car parking at an affordable rate for visitors in that situation.