Calls to split the Hunter New England Local Health District up have been made for some time, but now a new bill has been put before State Parliament to dissolve the merger made in 2004 and re-establish the New England district as a separate entity.
The bill, titled Health Services Amendment (Splitting of the Hunter New England Health District) Bill 2025, was introduced by the Barwon MP Roy Butler last month, but is gaining traction among locals with Gunnedah Shire Council introducing a survey for Gunnedah Shire residents asking for feedback on the idea.
“In 2004, two health districts were combined to form the Hunter New England Local Health District,” Mayor Fuller said.
“Gunnedah Shire Council intends to put in a submission to NSW Parliament about the splitting of the Hunter New England Local Health District bill, but we are also giving the community the opportunity to tell us their own thoughts and experiences.
“Unfortunately, there is only a short window of time here, so we urge people to take a look and have their say.”
The HNELHD is one of the most unique health districts in the state, presenting a unique set of circumstances for both patients and healthcare professionals. It’s the largest health district in NSW, it is the only health district that straddles the Great Dividing Range, and the only healthcare district that covers metropolitan, regional, rural, and remote areas.
Crucially, it is the only health district that’s significantly rural, but administered from a metropolitan centre. This provides a unique set of challenges, and, some say, biases when it comes to delivering healthcare in the district.
Health professionals support the split
Talking to health professionals in Tamworth, this presents numerous challenges to healthcare, ranging from a Newcastle-centric bias when it comes to resources and staffing, as well as the sheer “tyranny of distance” when it comes to delivering healthcare.
If New England is split off from Hunter, Tamworth would potentially become the main hospital for the new district, with a large, newly-refurbished hospital, and the experience as the previous seat of the former New England Local Health District.
Dr Sarah Jones, an emergency doctor, describes a Newcastle-centric bias when it comes to making time-critical treatment calls.
“Years ago, I had a patient who had a bleed in their brain who was stable enough,” Jones said.
While the patient was stable, their condition could deteriorate quickly, and so Jones wanted to transfer them immediately to Newcastle where the care was immediately available should the patient need it, knowing how long a transfer could take – but the Newcastle team wouldn’t approve a transfer until the patient actually needed it.
“The Newcastle team was saying ‘Well, that’s okay, you’re only a 90-minute helicopter ride away.’
“But I’m saying no, this patient needs to go now, because actually it’s three hours at best…. [to be] eligible for really aggressive care by three hours, they’re no longer eligible for the care.
“That doesn’t include finding out if there’s an asset (helicopter) available, getting the asset from wherever they are, getting the patient loaded, getting an accepting Doctor to get them off at the other end…
“It is realistically actually three to four hours to get a patient urgently from Tamworth to Newcastle.”
This also places patients further away from their friends and family – family contact, Jones says, is crucial for patient health and healing.
What splitting the district would do, Jones says, is allow more decision-making to be made by those who understand the terrain and the circumstances of healthcare in rural and regional NSW.
“What we did have [before the merger] was greater autonomy – about hiring and firing our own staff, how we choose to staff our Community Health, where we choose to put our funds,” she said.
“The bigger district that we’re in now gets given money and then has to decide how to distribute that more broadly.
“And many of those decision-makers,” Jones says, “sit in Newcastle.”
Jones gave a Workforce Projection Study done for Tamworth hospital as an example of not understanding how healthcare works in New England. The study was to ascertain the projected staffing levels needed for Tamworth hospital, but, “They use the numbers for the Tamworth LGA – despite the fact that actually we provide cover for Manilla, Barraba, Bingara, Inverell, Glen Innes…
“It’s definitely not just our LGA in our local health service.”
Other doctors have communicated problems of potential staff who want to live and work in the New England being poached by Hunter, with one anaesthetist being denied the right to work both publicly and privately in Tamworth – but being allowed to do so if they chose to in Newcastle.
Another doctor spoke of the time it was proposed that the pathology lab in Newcastle wanted to take over all microbiology services, shutting down the service in Tamworth, which would increase turnaround time of results for New England residents as samples and results travelled back and forth between Tamworth and Newcastle. Fortunately, that proposal did not proceed.
Not the first attempt to reverse the merger
The primary impetus for the bill was, according to Butler’s speech to Parliament, Hunter New England Health’s failure to keep Wee Waa’s hospital open.
“Part of the problem is that Hunter New England has failed to recruit adequate staff at hospitals in Narrabri and Wee Waa,” Butler said in Parliament.
Butler has said there has been a pattern of neglect of outlying regions in HNELHD.
“During my time in office, I have received numerous complaints from patients about treatment they have received in Hunter New England hospitals, mostly related to understaffing and poor resourcing.
“I passed these complaints on to the Minister. The official responses we receive back from Hunter New England are often dismissive of the claims made by patients and, as a result, nothing is ever done to fix those problems.”
This is not the first time inland regions of the HNELHD have called for independence from Hunter.
When the merger was announced in 2004, there were protests in New England over a lack of information on the merger, and then Member for Tamworth Peter Draper submitted a petition against it.
In 2023, then Member for the Northern Tablelands Adam Marshall submitted an identically-titled bill, which was not passed. Marshall’s predecessor Richard Torbay also raised concerns. Marshall’s replacement, Brendan Moylan, also supports the split.
“Splitting the health district has overwhelming public support,” Moylan said.
“I want to advocate better healthcare outcomes because the New England and Northwest regions are the ones who are crying out for better healthcare services.
In a statement to New England Times, a spokesperson from HNELHD said they’re “committed to ensuring we continue to provide high quality and accessible patient-centred care to all the communities we serve.
“A networked district ensures our rural and regional patients have access to specialist services that would be otherwise unavailable and delivers advantages in funding and efficiency.
“We’re pleased to participate in the NSW Parliamentary inquiry. Further information will be available when our submission to the inquiry is published on the Parliament NSW website.”
Anyone who wants to make a submission can do so here. Submissions close on April 17, 2025.
The Committee on Community Services, chaired by MP for Cessnock Clayton Barr, will be scrutinising the bill and any submissions.
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