By Tony Iltis
HOBART — Last June, the Tasmanian Liberal government announced the closure of the hospital in the isolated West Coast community of Rosebery. However, a mass campaign by the local community has brought it a reprieve, although its future remains uncertain.
Ian Jamieson from the Rosebery Hospital Action Campaign told Green Left Weekly that the campaign had a history going back to the late 1980s, when the Labor-Green coalition which then ruled Tasmania first announced the closure.
Against this and other attacks on rural services, 2000 West Coast people travelled to Hobart to make their case heard. The campaign was successful, and a new hospital was built in May 1995 (by which time the Liberals were back in power).
However, Jamieson said, "We knew we couldn't trust the Liberal government, and a year later they were trying to close it."
The community again mobilised. "Lobbying politicians was not the way to do it", Jamieson observed. "We had to get the mass of people involved."
About 500 people turned up to some of the actions and meetings — almost a third of Rosebery's population.
The government again backed down and promised that the hospital would remain open, retaining all its services and with no loss of jobs. Control, however, would pass from the state government to the West Coast Development Board (WCDB) — a body set up to promote small business.
Asked how such a body would run a hospital, Jamieson responded: "Funny you should ask: that's what we've been wondering. The community is not privy to discussions between the state government and the WCDB, and we're worried that they might still try to privatise or close it."
Another concern is that the WCDB will become an extra tier of bureaucracy, with much of the hospital's budget being absorbed by management costs. However, the hospital is still functioning, and other health services in rural Tasmania have survived because of Rosebery's campaign.
As part of the campaign to save the hospital and local services, Jamieson, who is a member of the Democratic Socialist Party and former president of the Tasmanian Mining Industry Unions Council, stood for, and was elected to, the West Coast Council. His election campaign focused on "cuts by federal and state governments, and the private sector, to local services, which are already thin on the ground".
He described the council as "not the be all and end all. It takes mass action by ordinary people and workers to force change."
The council was, however, a platform that could be used to mobilise people. "It's a rallying point, a focus, not the answer."