Tuesday, 30 August 2022

Ambulance services

Mr WALSH (Murray Plains) (14:28): My question is to the Minister for Ambulance Services. Recently Judith from Cunningham Downs retirement village in Echuca had a fall, fracturing her hip. An ambulance was called at 2.30 pm, which did not arrive until 8.45 pm—a very painful wait for Judith of over 6 hours. How is it acceptable an elderly woman was forced to lie in pain for over 6 hours waiting for an ambulance from a station located just 6 kilometres away?

Ms THOMAS (Macedon—Minister for Health, Minister for Ambulance Services) (14:29): I thank the member for Murray Plains for his question in relation to Judith and her experience of waiting for an ambulance in Echuca. As those on the other side know, what we have seen is that we have just come off the busiest quarter ever, with the highest demand ever for our ambulance services. Our paramedics have been working around the clock to deliver the vital services, the life-saving services, that we expect them to and that Victorians deserve.

But the member for Murray Plains can ask this question while at the same time deriding the initiatives that ambulance paramedics have asked us to put in place, which of course include the ambulance off-load centres that we have established at 14 of the busiest hospitals across the state. These off-load teams are designed to ensure that we can get ambulances back on the road as quickly as possible, responding to 000 emergencies—I might make this point too—as I said, at the busiest time for our ambulances ever. Our government have been investing in ambulance services since we were first elected, and indeed prior to the pandemic we had the best response times on record. The pandemic has impacted our times here in Victoria, just as it has impacted response times in New South Wales, in South Australia, in Queensland and right around the world. But here in Victoria we continue to recruit and train ambos. I was very proud, not that long ago actually, to join the Premier when we welcomed some of the more than 404 new recruits that are on the road now with our ambulance services. Indeed it was great to see that we have got ambos now being sent out across the Barwon south-west region—Ocean Grove, Hamilton and Torquay; in the Gippsland region in—

Mr Walsh: On a point of order, Speaker, on the issue of relevance, can I ask you to bring the minister back to answering the question about Judith in Echuca, which has nothing to do with the south-west coast? It is a long, long way away from Echuca. Could she please come back to answering the issue around Judith and why she could not get an ambulance?

The SPEAKER: The minister has strayed a little from the question that was asked. I do ask her to come back to the question.

Ms THOMAS: Thank you very much, Speaker. Let me make this point: of these new recruits I am also delighted that 34 will join the Loddon Mallee region, including in Mildura, Swan Hill and indeed in Gisborne as well. So our government will continue to back in our ambulance service by making sure that we are continuing to recruit and train paramedics and we are continuing to implement strategies that enable them to off-load their patients into the care of nurses and paramedics at our health services in order to get them back on the road as quickly as possible.

Mr WALSH (Murray Plains) (14:32): With country ambulances being called to work closer to Melbourne or other major regional cities due to shortages and the requirement to backfill into those areas, why is country Victoria being left with limited ambulance services or, in some cases, no ambulance service, because the Andrews government has failed to adequately invest in country health for the last eight years?

Ms THOMAS (Macedon—Minister for Health, Minister for Ambulance Services) (14:33): I thank the member for his question. I want the house to understand that our government takes investment in ambulance services, investment in our paramedic workforce and the delivery of emergency care to all Victorians very, very seriously. It is why we have recruited more than 2000 additional paramedics. Indeed we have more and better paramedics at work here today in Victoria than anywhere else in the nation. Victorians well remember what we inherited from those on the other side. They were at war with our paramedics, and we had the worst response times in the history of this state.