Stop Tearing Our Health Service Apart
Opinion Piece by Cr Ron Mildren - Friday 13 March 2026
Community trust in our health service has been unfairly eroded by unrelenting political campaigning, activism, protest, and disruption in the name of seeking a new hospital.
Last week, I was taken by ambulance, personally experiencing an emergency attendance at Albury Hospital, resulting in a four-day stay. This is what I experienced and I heard.
Our Albury Wodonga Health staff are exceptional, delivering the highest level of care anyone could wish for – but you wouldn’t know it if you listened to a vocal minority in our community.
As a Wodonga Councillor, I’ve heard stories across our region where people are afraid to seek the medical care they need locally, because they think they won’t actually receive the care they need here in our community.
Frankly, enough is enough.
The talking down of our local health service for political gain must stop. It is irresponsible and dangerous.
The biggest lesson I learnt when admitted to Albury Hospital is that our unacknowledged health workers are frustrated and disappointed in the way our health service is being talked down - both from within and externally - in the name of ‘fighting for’ a new hospital on a new site.
Our health workers want a new hospital, they very clearly do, but they’re simply fed up with being politicised, being subjected to activist and protest rhetoric, and being maligned in the misguided effort to discredit Albury Wodonga Health rather than to focus on the pursuit of a new hospital.
Targeting the operational aspects of the existing health service and board of management under the name of seeking a new hospital is not fair game.
Irrespective of your opinion about the service or the board - the efficacy and functionality of the health service and/or the board should not be a tool for activism or protest in the pursuit of a new hospital.
That approach only serves to denigrate staff and diminish morale, and most concerningly, it undermines our community’s trust and confidence in our local health service, so much so, some people are afraid to present to Wodonga Hospital or Albury Hospital with health issues.
The Orange Independent’s use of nebulous and meaningless words like ‘this is a failure by states to secure the long-term future of health services in Albury Wodonga’ get thrown around in reckless abandon.
This matter is not about ‘health services’ but is about ‘health infrastructure’. To say it’s about our health services is to denigrate the very good health service providers who work so well under significant infrastructure shortfalls.
In my opinion, the Orange Independent political movement and its proxies are ruthlessly using our dedicated and professional health personnel for an unacceptable pursuit of political gain.
Forums, questionnaires, and Facebook pages produced by the Orange Independent movement and its proxies during elections, seemingly designed to advantage independent candidates, is not only duplicitous and a clear conflict of interest, but is downright deceitful.
Now, after years of talking things down, the Orange Independent campaign and its proxies are tearing our health service apart.
The worst part, this is a cruel campaign to turn our community against each other – why?
Because the Orange Independents know deep down they can never deliver the funding we need for new health infrastructure. They are more interested in votes.
If they could deliver, they would have done so already – Helen Haines has been the Member for Indi for seven years, with Cathy McGowan in for six years before that.
After 13 years, the Orange Independents and their associated negative protest movement have not been successful by any measure.
In fact, it could be said that their actions have further alienated the state and possibly commonwealth ministers, meaning the gap between the ‘new hospital campaign’ and the governments who are responsible for funding it has never been wider.
What’s now clear, is the more these Orange activists ‘fight’ everyone and everything, the less government is willing to work with our community to meet our needs.
For instance, we know the AWH Board wants a new hospital on a new site because the Board stretched the envelope in the campaign for a new hospital on a new site with the Chairman and CEO formally writing to ministers – whilst still working within the governing rules imposed by the current two-states agreement. This was a brave move that has only ever been undermined by Orange Independent campaigners.
When I was Wodonga’s Mayor, I sought to bring people together. Bringing our health service, its leadership, our community, our region, and our connection to government – together. Because by bringing people together and getting them to understand our challenges and needs, we always get a better outcome.
On the other hand, the Orange Independent movement and their proxies are driving people apart and pushing people away – and it’s evident we’re getting a worse outcome for it.
There’s a basic rule of democracy that says majority rules, and that the loneliest number in a democracy is one. True independence can only ever be the loneliest number of one.
After over a decade, the evidence on the new hospital campaign is in - independents are not effective. They can only ‘talk’ with little tangible action.
The language of the Orange Independent movement is empty rhetoric of “fighting for” with no achievable outcome and no material influence at the decision-making table.
I am well and truly over the empty rhetoric and talk of the Orange Independent movement, and from what I heard first-hand last week, so are our local health workers.
The Orange Independent movement must be careful what they wish for. I’m most concerned that if the Independent activists and protest movement keeps causing division and instability like they currently are, the Victorian and NSW Governments will take our local health service away from us at the stroke of a pen.
I don’t want our health service split and managed from Shepparton and Wagga - neither do our local health professionals, and neither should you.
We cannot allow political activists to tear our health service apart.