Delegates at the NSW Nationals’ annual conference at Cowra threw their unanimous support behind a bid by Kay Hull to allow the post-mortem examinations to be carried out at multiple regional locations, instead of continuing to be largely centralised at the Department of Forensic Medicine in Newcastle.

Mrs Hull, the former Member for Riverina, said it was an issue that had been regularly raised with her while she was a federal parliamentarian, despite being a state government issue.

“It is difficult enough to lose a loved one. It is difficult enough to leave them behind to go the morgue,” she said.

“But to have to do that, knowing they are going to be shipped around the state and then have wait for an autopsy is unimaginable.

“When I first found out about this, I was quite staggered.

“I am hopeful we can get some real attention on this.”

Gundagai woman Jill Jones, whose son Mark died in a crash on the Gocup Road in July 2017, has been campaigning to have autopsies performed at regional hospitals since the tragedy and has welcomed the support of Mrs Hull.

The Jones family had to wait for more than two weeks to organise Mr Jones’s funeral because of the length of time it took for the autopsy process to be completed.

Mrs Jones has previously called for the state government to put more money into NSW Health Pathology, so that its facilities can be boosted and additional services put into regional areas, to prevent a backlog at the Newcastle centre.

She is also concerned about the length of time bodies are left waiting in rural morgues before government contractors are available to take them to Newcastle.

“This is just amazing,” Mrs Jones said of the NSW Nationals’ vote.

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“It is the most horrible thing, knowing they are just lying there in the morgue, and then having to wait for them to be picked up and taken to Newcastle.”

After her son died, Mrs Jones said family members travelled from interstate to attend his funeral, but had to leave Gundagai before any service was actually held because of the length of time between the crash and the completion of post-mortem examinations.

Wagga Base Hospital director Helen Cooper has previously told The Daily Advertiser that NSW Health Pathology has an anatomical pathologist who is qualified to carry out non-coronial post mortems in certain circumstances.

“Upgraded facilities for undertaking non-coronial post-mortems was completed in Stage 2 of the $282.1 million Wagga redevelopment,” she said. 

“Only a few non-coronial post-mortems have been carried out at Wagga Base Hospital in recent years.”