Tuesday, 28 November 2023

Health system

Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (13:50): In the last two years 20 Victorians have died whilst waiting for an ambulance and 1395 Victorians died before they could get their vital surgery. These are shocking numbers, and these numbers represent Victorians and their families. What a devastating result for those people that died because they could not get the care they needed. It further demonstrates that Labor continues to fail Victorian patients when they need that care and support.

Victorians are being left behind everywhere because the priorities of this government are not focused on delivering for Victorians, they are more focused on delivering for their mates. Just look at the issues in our hospitals with the increase in abuse and violence occurring in our hospitals. Operation Daintree exposed that training programs were cooked up in the former Premier’s office, with his union mates delivering a program that then failed to deliver – millions wasted. And yet we have nurses and other health professionals being abused and assaulted and leaving the system and leaving Victoria. 9520 Victorian nurses left the system last year and a further 7000 the year before. That is 16,000 nurses that have left our system. They were not all retiring. They left the system. And now the government is applying a retrospective health tax to GPs that will close clinics, end bulk-billing and force more patients to our already overstretched emergency departments.

At a time when we need health as a priority and this government to focus on health, they are failing to deliver exactly what Victorians need. What we do not need is a bigger centralised system in Lonsdale Street run by bureaucrats. We need to fix the health system. The government needs to focus on this, get its priorities right and ensure that these shocking figures showing so many people have been dying cease.