Tuesday, 18 February 2025

Ministers statements: health services

Mary-Anne THOMAS (Macedon – Leader of the House, Minister for Health, Minister for Ambulance Services) (14:45): I rise to update the house on the Allan Labor government’s work to ensure that all Victorians can access free health care where and when they need it. Our government has invested in 29 urgent care clinics right across the state. We are investing in these so that families can access the care that they need when and where they need it. We know that there have been more than 719,000 presentations at these urgent care clinics, and what is more, we know that 50 per cent of those are patients who would otherwise have gone to an emergency department. Free, fast and local – that is what we are on about through the delivery of our urgent care centres.

But we have not just stopped there. Our nation-leading Victorian Virtual Emergency Department has been an absolute ripper, now operating 24/7, proudly built in the north out of Northern Hospital. This statewide service is available for urgent but not life-threatening emergencies. It has seen well over 400,000 patients since its inception, and 85 per cent of those patients tell us that they otherwise would have gone to the emergency department. Of course in order to deliver this, you have got to keep backing in your hardworking healthcare workers, so I am delighted that we now have a new enterprise agreement with our ambos. We have a new enterprise agreement with our nurses, and today I was able to introduce legislation to strengthen nurse-to-patient ratios.

It is no secret that Medicare is broken. Let me tell you why it is broken. It is broken because of almost 10 years of neglect from a federal Liberal–National government. I have been talking about the action that we are taking. On that side of the house what have they done to advocate for Medicare? Absolutely nothing.