In a major blow for the cross-border health service, Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon said yesterday Albury-Wodonga’s bid had been unsuccessful.

Though Ms Roxon had said earlier this week that the $560 million program would help “close the gap between city and country”, Albury-Wodonga missed out despite being further away from Melbourne than successful Victorian candidates Ballarat and Gippsland.

Instead, the Border received a $5 million PET/CT scanner to upgrade existing services.

Ms Roxon said Albury-Wodonga’s bid was rejected after the Victorian health department listed Ballarat, which received $42 million, and Gippsland ($23.5 million) as higher priorities.

Oncologist Craig Underhill expressed “shock and disappointment” at the rejection.

He blamed uncertainty over Albury-Wodonga’s status since the health merger for sinking the plan, saying because of the border “we were the priority of neither Victoria nor NSW”.

“Our very large regional population has missed out again because of the border,” he said.

“The border remains a barrier to developing services and that’s not good enough.”

Pressed by Dr Underhill, other health professionals and the media, Ms Roxon said she wouldn’t rule out further funding for certain Albury-Wodonga cancer services.

However, she also emphasised that there wasn’t going to be a second round of major funding.

Ms Roxon promised to look further at Albury-Wodonga’s needs for cancer services.

This would include briefings with her department on options Albury-Wodonga Health could pursue for funding.

She said Dr Underhill and his colleagues had told her they had “fallen between two stools” and missed out.

While the Rudd Government’s health reform agenda was intended to make sure that border communities didn’t miss out in future, the department had to consider the state plans as that’s how things were organised at present.

“There’s a lot of passion about how we could provide better services here,” Ms Roxon said.

Continued page 5

More reports — pages 4, 5 and 7