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Ronelle: When I found out about the decision that they wanted to close
Westmead Morgue I wrote letters to the local MPs and only had one response
from an MP and then I contacted Channel Nine, Simon Bouda from Channel Nine
and we did a story on that.
'Hello Simon, it's Ronelle, how are you?'
Simon Bouda: We have a chief of staffs area here at Channel Nine newsroom
which is manned twenty-four hours a day,
it's a matter of a phone call in,
people ring in often with tips of information.
For instance with Ronelle she was obviously a key to getting this matter publicised.
After Channel Nine ran the story she went onto 2GB radio,
she went to a number of different mediums to get her point across about her
concerns about the closure of Westmead Morgue.
Ronelle: And then I contacted Alan Jones from radio 2GB.
I decided to take my story to the media because I felt that there was enough evidence
for a decision to be made not to close the forensic department.
I felt that the closure of Westmead Morgue was going to affect families
and it was going to affect the community.
A friend of mine went to school with Alan Jones so I was lucky there to be able to
meet Alan Jones in person and talk to him about the issue.
He was very interested and couldn't understand the reason to close the morgue
because it was going to affect the police service,
it was going to affect the ambulance.
The local paper was a bit difficult to get the story running because they were
interested in how it was affecting the families.
In addition to 2GB and Simon Bouda and the papers I contacted the Opposition Members
of Parliament who became active in this issue also who in turn were
having interviews on the radio and talking about how they felt
and how they could see that it would affect the police service,
it would affect the ambulance and it would affect families.
I just felt that this was something I believed in and I felt that I needed to do it
and so that was exciting, you know seeing stories on the TV and the radio.
And this radio story went on for two, three weeks every day.