Greens MP Dawn Walker publicly questioned Health Services Minister Brad Hazzard in the Upper House a fortnight ago, while locally the group have made headway in their bid to get the program reinstated, although have not been given any estimations of when that might be.

Action group chief Samantha Wibberley said it has been great to receive the ongoing support of Ms Walker, who has previously helped spearhead a successful campaign to get the Murwullimbah CMP re-instated in her seat of Richmond, after it too was put into hiatus, before an attempt to permanently close the service.

“It was really good to meet Dawn face to face – she has been very supportive of us, and has continued to offer that support,” Ms Wibberley said.

“She also confirmed to us that we have been doing the right thing so far, and told us to just keep the pressure on until the service is back up and running.” 

Ms Walker is hoping that Mr Hazzard will be able to answer her Question Time inquiries as to when the Tamworth CMP will re-open when the NSW Upper House sits again on Wednesday.

“She has also offered to take any more questions from us to parliament as well,” Ms Wibberley said.

Recently the action group did make some headway with hospital administration and Hunter New England Health advertising jobs to fill job vacancies in both the core service and the CMP.

The health department representatives also agreed to the formation of a maternity services consumer engagement panel, although Ms Wibberley and the Friends of Tamworth Maternity Services group still have some reservations about the terms of reference laid out for the new committee in a meeting last week.

“We just want to make sure that we have a meaningful consumer engagement panel that is not just tokenistic, and can actually make a difference to the services,” Ms Wibberley said.

Negotiations will continue this week.