If successful, a new Western Riverina Local Health District would be formed, and would see Deniliquin break away from Murrumbidgee Local Health District.
The new health district is being promoted by Member for Murray Helen Dalton through a Health Services Amendment (Splitting of the Murrumbidgee Local Health District) Bill 2025.
A Legislative Assembly Committee on Community Services report was tabled last week, recommending the parliamentary vote.
Mrs Dalton said the report “puts it in black and white, the current system is not working for the people of Murray, and the people making the decisions have never set foot in most of our hospitals”.
There has been strong support for the Bill in Griffith, though Edward River Council in its submission to the inquiry said it took an “agnostic” view to the change, while acknowledging that health infrastructure and services in the region had not kept pace with community expectations over recent decades and urgent action was needed to address this situation.
Mrs Dalton said the report records that a Griffith City Council survey of 791 residents found 62.3 per cent want the district split while only 2.8 per cent support the current structure and that the doctors of the Griffith Base Hospital Medical Staff Council were unanimous in wanting Griffith to break away.
The current Murrumbidgee Local Health District is based in Wagga, and Mrs Dalton said while it is “a fine city … it is not where my constituents live, and it should not be where every decision about their health gets made”.
She said one council told the inquiry the district’s engagement with the community improved since the noise of the split, “which shows exactly how much notice they take when country people stay quiet”.
“We need our own Western Riverina Local Health District run by people who live here, and now every politician in the Parliament has to decide whether they will listen to the people who sent them there,” Mrs Dalton said.
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