Last week I attended the Country Mayor’s Association Meeting. The CMA allows local government from rural and regional NSW to come together to discuss issues of specific interest to areas outside the major metropolitan centres. The priorities discussed were the access to health, water security and financial assistance. The guest speaker was Minister for Health and Medical Research, Brad Hazzard. It was great to have someone from the health sector speak at an event such as this and given the year we have experienced through COVID, it was very interesting listening to him. I spoke about a few operational issues concerning our region and asked for a new operating theatre for Forbes Hospital.
I attended the meeting with the neighbouring Councils to discuss the Collaborative Care Project for Lachlan Health Forbes, Parkes and Condobolin to look at improving our way of delivering Primary Healthcare Services. With assistance from the Federal Government, money has been funded towards this very important program. In attendance was Minister for Regional Health, Mark Coulton, Deputy Prime Minister, Michael McCormack and all three councils – facilitated by the Rural Doctors Network.
The Seven Sisters Bridge work has now been completed by Council and it looks fantastic. Council will now work on the new approaches to the bridge in the coming weeks with the installation of a new road base and approach guardrails. The bridge is planned to be open to traffic by the end of March.
By Councillor Jenny Webb