THE Member for Tamworth Peter Draper wrote to The Leader yesterday expressing “concern” at an alleged “campaign of instability being waged by the National Party and some sections of the media against the construction of a new hospital in Tamworth”.

It is our intention to publish his letter in full in tomorrow’s edition.

This is in order to give Mr Draper time to prepare responses to some of the questions we have been asking about the new hospital in recent months.

He is yet to comment on the omission of a start date for the hospital from last week’s State Government 10-year infrastructure plan.

He is also yet to get back to the people of Tamworth on when he expects work on the hospital is likely to start and when it is likely to finish.

He is also yet to publicly comment on recent advice to the Nioka Committee that it would be “unwise” for them to spend large amounts of money upgrading the facility “in the near future”.

We are taking the liberty, given the attention we have paid to the lack of publicly announced progress on the hospital plan in recent weeks, of assuming we are the “sections of the media” Mr Draper was referring to.

We would like to draw his attention to the fact that we have been campaigning for a new hospital – not against one.

Our investigation and reports clearly pre-date the recent interest of The Nationals in this subject and we suggest Mr Draper’s linkage of The Nationals with “some sections of the media” is either the subject of paranoia or an unfortunate error.

Mr Draper took great credit for the announcement of a new hospital for Tamworth during the last election

campaign.

Now he is claiming our quest for answers to the very basic questions of when construction is likely to start, when it is likely to finish and how much the hospital is likely to cost is “making my job of delivering the new facility increasingly difficult”.

The first step would be to deliver some answers. Neither Mr Iemma or Mr Costa have been able to do so to date.