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Councillors push for a Morisset health facility as Lake Macquarie heads for 270,000 people

A motion carried at the 15 June council meeting asks the health district where its mooted Morisset HealthOne facility is up to, and commits council to lobbying state and federal ministers. To be clear about what happened: council is asking for a health facility. Nobody has announced one.

The Hunter Ledger · 3 July 2026 · every claim below links to its source

The Notice of Motion, moved by Councillors Madeline Bishop and Kate Warner and carried at Lake Macquarie City Council’s 15 June 2026 ordinary meeting (item 26NM009, pages 199 to 200 of the business papers), builds its case on the numbers of the city’s south-west.

Lake Macquarie’s population, now and forecast

Figures as cited in the carried motion, item 26NM009.

The motion says a “substantial proportion” of that growth lands in the Greater Morisset area: Cooranbong, Morisset and Wyee, an officially recognised Regionally Significant Growth Area.

The case the motion makes

Residents south of Toronto through to the northern Central Coast currently travel long distances for urgent and hospital care: to Wyong on the Central Coast, or to the John Hunter, Mater or Belmont hospitals.
Emergency department presentations by Lake Macquarie residents are projected to rise 20 per cent by 2036.
Just over the LGA boundary, Greater Warnervale on the northern Central Coast is projected to add an estimated 35,000 residents, drawing on the same stretched services.
Hunter New England Local Health District briefed councillors in April 2024 on a potential “HealthOne” integrated health facility for the area; the motion requests a progress update on exactly that.

The resolution commits council to write to state and federal ministers and local members seeking advocacy support, and to Central Coast Council, whose residents share the service gap from the other side of the boundary.

The same growth, from another angle

The same meeting endorsed the draft Morisset Place Strategy for public exhibition (item 26SP029 of the same business papers): a 20-year land-use framework for housing, jobs, transport and infrastructure in the corridor. Its figures make the health motion’s point from the supply side: Morisset-Mandalong’s population grew from 3,647 to about 4,500 between the 2016 and 2021 Censuses and is projected to exceed 11,000 by 2046, with the broader Greater Morisset area exceeding 50,000.

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