YOUR SAY: 'One of Australia's largest-ever regional hospital projects'

That's why the Victorian, NSW and Commonwealth governments joined forces to invest in one of Australia's largest-ever regional hospital projects in Albury-Wodonga.

For too long the border towns have had a fragmented health system that has seen the duplication of services and patients needing to be transported between Albury and Wodonga campuses. We listened to clinicians who told us this was not safe and that acute services needed to be located in one place.

The new $558 million clinical services building and upgrades at the Albury campus will deliver safer and better care, with more medical and surgical beds, new operating theatres, expanded outpatient and specialist treatment spaces, a new ICU, relocated maternity and newborn services, a new children's inpatient unit, new adult acute mental health inpatient unit and more parking.

It makes sense to locate the new clinical service building in Albury on the same site as existing health facilities, including the brand new $36 million emergency department, the regional cancer centre, the University of NSW Rural School of Clinical Medicine as well as the Hilltop Albury Wodonga Patient and Carer Accommodation facility.

Investing in a major new build on the Albury campus is more sustainable, delivers better integration and allows us to deliver the project sooner, to meet the future health care needs of the community. The project scope has been informed by the Albury Wodonga Health clinical services plan 2022 and has been subject to extensive consultation - with more to come.

Finally, I want to assure locals that the Wodonga campus remains essential to the work of Albury Wodonga Health and that planning to ensure Wodonga hospital continues to deliver care that complements that available at the Albury campus is well under way.

We are getting on and delivering this half a billion dollar investment as part of the Allan Labor government's commitment to deliver the community of Albury-Wodonga world-class healthcare right on their doorstep for generations to come.

The region's wine industry is very important in many ways and it should be valued and featured more by the media. The great family history of winemaking in Rutherglen has much to be proud of and celebrated with wine related stories. The political hype around the China tariffs being lifted needs to be tempered and noted that it is never going to be the way it once was. Our wine regions need tourists year round and ways to entice need to be part of regional tourism from the Murray to the mountains.