Wednesday, 14 August 2024

Health system

Daniela DE MARTINO (Monbulk) (16:55): It gives me pleasure to rise today to speak on this grievance debate with positivity and facts, in stark contrast to those opposite, who tend to trade in negativity and a dearth of accurate information and often at an uncomfortably loud volume – although not the member who just spoke, I must admit. I can only suspect that many over there feel that the louder they shout, the more gravitas they give to their misinformation. Shouting loudly does not equal speaking truth, and their ignominious behaviour is certainly something for which I grieve sincerely today. But I said I will speak positively, and I intend to do so because Victorians deserve to know the truth about what our government has done and continues to do for them, especially when it comes to health care.

Labor governments believe in universal health care. We believe a person’s financial status should never determine their health outcome, and we are proud to stand by this each and every day. We have a world-class hospital system here in Victoria, but one would not know it if one only listened to those opposite. We believe in our hardworking nurses and paramedics. This year’s budget saw our Labor government make an unprecedented multiyear investment of more than $11 billion in our health system, which includes an additional $8.8 billion to fund hospitals over the long term. This investment includes an uplift in the price for every occasion of care, because we understand there is a pressure on the rising health expenditure.

Last week the Premier and our Minister for Health announced that we will invest a further $1.5 billion to support our hospitals, and we need to bear in mind that in the last quarter alone we saw record demand on our emergency departments, with over 503,000 presentations. That is a startling number, and it is 6 per cent higher than for the same period last year. This additional funding is in recognition of additional demand since the original modelling was undertaken. It is going to support additional planned surgeries. It is going to further grant funding and support the implantation of something I am very excited about, electronic medical records, because I have had several experiences over a good 15 ‍years with a mother with very complex healthcare needs. Every time she presented to a different hospital I had to stand by her side as her advocate and explain her complex healthcare history, her medical history, because our hospital networks are not talking to each other and still using faxes like it is the 1980s and pastels are still in fashion.

A member interjected.

Daniela DE MARTINO: Pastels might be coming back, but thankfully faxes are on the way out. Our funding for electronic medical records will actually make a significant difference for people who use our hospital systems. It means that their information will be able to be transferred live between hospitals, and that results in better healthcare outcomes for them. I have heard our health minister state these facts in this place, but I have heard those opposite try to drown out her words with – surprise, surprise – shouting. It appears that those opposite do not want to hear the facts, or they deride them, and that is a real shame because it diminishes them every time they conduct themselves this way. So I do grieve for them, I truly do.

A total of $21.5 billion has been invested in this financial year to ensure our hospitals can continue to provide world-class care, and that is over 25 per cent of our total state budget. That will ensure that our hospitals keep caring for their patients as they continue to recover from the impacts and increased costs of the pandemic. The ripples of the pandemic continue around the world. It is not a matter of ‘It’s all over, red rover’. We are still feeling the effects, and we will for many years to come, I believe. So unlike those opposite, we will not be closing, selling off or privatising our hospitals.

I do grieve for the healthcare workers and for the Victorians across our state who needed public health care when those opposite were last in charge, because they found the coalition government wanting. In fact when having a look at the past behaviour – because the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour – I found an article in the Age dating back to November 2011 which stated that:

The Baillieu government has developed a secret plan to goad the state’s nurses into industrial action so it can force them into arbitration, cut nurse numbers and replace them at hospital bedsides with low-skilled “health assistants”.

A member: Shame.

Daniela DE MARTINO: Shame indeed. It continues:

A cabinet-in-confidence submission, signed by Health Minister David Davis … confirms that the government had detailed plans to cut the annual nursing budget by $104 million.

That was the plan. They had also planned to actually make the nurse–patient ratio, which at the time was one to four, more ‘flexible’. They wanted to replace some nurses with low-paid, low-skilled health assistants, as I just mentioned, and they wanted to reduce the ratio of university-qualified nurses on wards and introduce shorter shifts and split shifts. Split shifts are terrible. If anyone here knows anything about split shifts, they are obscene. There is a reason why they do not exist in industrial agreements: because they are, on the whole, awful for the worker. It continues:

Mr Davis’s submission revealed that in return for these cuts, which amount to 4 per cent of the nurses’ wage budget, nurses would get a pay rise of just 3.5 per cent per year.

I think we have done a lot better than those opposite did when they were at the helm. And this is probably the most concerning point – I know, all of that is concerning, but this also concerns me:

The government’s aim, revealed in the submission, is to have the crisis continue to a point whereby the industrial tribunal, Fair Work Australia, is either called in or steps in because negotiations have broken down and the nurses’ action is deemed harmful to public welfare.

Unbelievable. That was the tactic they employed last time, and as I say, the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. So I grieve for Victorians and I grieve for everyone in the healthcare system, because should those opposite have the privilege to sit on this side of the chamber, I fear for our hospital system and everyone who works within it.

I am going to go back to the positivity I promised and talk about our health services plan, because with this funding that we have increased there comes a greater responsibility to continue to make improvements in our world-class health system. You never take the foot off the pedal. We have always got to keep trying to improve on what we are doing. That is why we welcomed the expert advisory committee’s Health Services Plan report and we accepted in full or in principle 26 of the 27 ‍recommendations, because we are going to continue putting patients first.

We are going to deliver a more connected and a better health system through establishing local health service networks. The whole point of them is to support hospitals in fostering better partnerships. It makes sense that hospitals in a geographic area actually coordinate and talk to each other so that the patient is at the centre and their best outcome is foremost of the thinking and the actions undertaken by those hospitals. It is not about being their own fiefdoms where they will only go about and do whatever they think at that moment; it is about them actually collaborating to make sure that the patient outcome is priority number one.

We are establishing Hospitals Victoria to support frontline care by ensuring the ongoing sustainability of our hospitals. Victorians rightly expect funding to be prioritised for delivery of care. That is where the money should be absolutely going as the first priority. Hospitals Victoria will be a dedicated agency which will continue to streamline operational processes and reduce all the duplication where it does not make sense. We know duplication is unhelpful. We have to minimise it.

There are a few other things I really want to talk about. One of them is our priority primary care centres. I have one not far from me, and funnily enough, I had planned to go down and take a photo with the member for Bayswater, because it is actually located in the member for Bayswater’s electorate. We were going to catch up and have a little photo there. Unfortunately my plans were scuppered because my daughter broke her arm the night before our planned catch-up. I knew that we might have to wait some time in a hospital because of course it was late at night, as these things always happen at the worst possible time. I realised we have got a PPCC nearby. That is where we went, and it was fabulous. There was no waiting. In fact I had not even finished filling out the form by the time that the doctor had brought my daughter into the consulting room. I was still scribbling on it as we went there – that is how quickly she was seen and diagnosed with the broken arm. It was strapped for the night, and in the morning off we went – X-ray, cast, the lot.

PPCCs, can I just inform you, Acting Speaker Edbrooke and the chamber, have expanded to 29 sites and have reached over 475,000 visits. That is 475,000 people who have gone along and received the urgent care – not lights and sirens critical care but the urgent care – that they need to receive on that day. That is an extraordinary number, and that is testament to the vision. I do recall that the member for Gippsland South was saying there is no vision; there is plenty of vision on this side of the chamber. We can see the solutions, and boy, when we put them into action things happen and they happen for the best. In addition to that, more than 338,000 patients have passed through our innovative virtual emergency department between September 2022 and June 2024. Member for Yan Yean, 338,000 ‍patients – what a number – and 86 per cent avoided an unnecessary trip to hospital. I believe the member for Yan Yean has had a personal experience and sings the praises of virtual EDs. We are being innovative.

No-one enjoyed the pandemic – I certainly did not – but we have learned how to innovate as result of it. There have been silver linings to the pandemic cloud, and virtual appointments and telehealth appointments have been a boon for us here. Our virtual EDs – again, let us sing the praises of those. Positivity and facts – and we do not have to shout to get them across. Our $1.5 billion COVID catch-up plan has been working. There has been a drop in the waitlist of more than 33 per cent since we launched it in April 2022. That is also an extraordinary figure. We all should be incredibly proud of it. I know that I am. It is the lowest that it has been since the prepandemic 2019–20 figures, and almost 210,000 planned surgeries were performed in 2023–24 – the highest financial year figure on record. That is extraordinary. Again we put our energies into driving those numbers down, and it worked.

The average emergency department length of stay for admitted patients between February 2023 and March 2024 was reduced by 55 minutes, and for non-admitted patients it was reduced by 14 minutes. Again we are getting on top of these things because we have as a Labor government always understood that everyone is entitled to exceptional health care, and that is why we will always back our nurses in and our paramedics. We will always put money into health care, because that is what we stand for. We are not going to be creating a secret plan to cut nurse numbers like the Baillieu government did. How ignoble of them – shame indeed.

We remain the national leader when it comes to transforming the delivery of women’s health. Our women’s health inquiry, with over 7000 submissions, has been extraordinary. I hosted two forums myself in my electorate. I was delighted to have the Parliamentary Secretary for Women’s Health, the member for Northcote, come and join me at one, and the Minister for Housing and Minister for Equality in the other place came and joined me for the other. They were two of probably the most powerful sessions of any kind of forum I have ever been a part of. The raw emotion in that room but then also the gratitude from women who had a place – and sometimes for some of them it was the first opportunity ever – where they got to speak about their experience with pain and be heard and be held by everyone in that room were some of the most potent things. I have actually had women come up to me in the street, and also at the supermarket, and thank me for hosting those forums.

Lauren Kathage interjected.

Daniela DE MARTINO: No, I do not actually want to take credit. It speaks more to the fact that we as a government through our women’s caucus, because we believe in women in politics, are developing great policy and putting it into practice. We want to be heard and the Victorian people want to be heard, and as a government we listen. We genuinely consult with people. Even when we know that maybe we are not going to share the same opinion, we go out and we listen, and with the stories we take on we develop good, real policies to make this place better than we found it. That is why I am here. That is why we are here. I do, as I said, grieve for Victoria if those opposite do get the privilege to sit on this side, because my concern is it would be cuts, cuts, closures and cuts, and wouldn’t that be a disastrous day for us all.