'How can anybody have faith': Albury nurse left disappointed at summit

Branch president of NSW Nurses and Midwives Association Geoff Hudson, was not impressed with what came from the event on Friday, March 1, which saw ongoing health issues in the region discussed, including the Albury hospital upgrade.

"I'm really grateful to the Wodonga council for facilitating it. I think it's really important that we have this discussion, that we have all of these stakeholders and decision makers come together," he said.

"As a frontline worker, as a nurse, as a community member, it was actually really disappointing a lot of the time.

"I think discussions and decisions [were had] that are quite academic. If you don't live in the community, if you live somewhere else, if you're a policymaker in Sydney or Melbourne, [it's] just a decision on a bit of paper.

"They have real impacts on the staff and the community members and the patients who need to use our health service. And I think that was missing from today."

The October 2022 announcement of $558 million funding to redevelop Albury hospital, also came under fire by Mr Hudson, who works at Albury hospital.

"To me, I made the analogy that it's like if every passenger on the Titanic was looking at the iceberg and saying, 'there's an iceberg', and the captain said, 'not only are we not going to crash into the iceberg, there is no iceberg at all actually'," he said.

"We know that the funding envelope that's been announced isn't enough to provide even what this new master plan is telling us. So how can anybody have faith that actually we are going to get what is promised?"

Mr Hudson hopes that changes start to be implemented immediately before further state elections.

"I certainly hope it's not going to take another election because those are quite a few years away - 2026, 2027," he said.

"We don't have that long to wait. We know that any delay is just going to impact on the community and it's going to have long term ramifications for health care in this region."

The Victorian government did not make an appearance at the summit to the disappointment of Wodonga mayor Ron Mildren.

However, he was satisfied at how the event turned out.

"I think it was an extraordinary event. It highlighted all the things that we've been talking about for quite some time," he said.

"It showed that there are some significant inadequacies in the plan that's been put to our community and that we need to review and go back to basics."