Wednesday, 7 February 2024
Motions
Ambulance services
Ambulance services
Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (14:27): I move:
That this house:
(1) notes that Victorian lives are being put at risk by the ongoing crisis within Ambulance Victoria that has seen:
(a) a reduction in mobile intensive care ambulance (MICA) services, including:
(i) a drop in the number of MICA paramedics;
(ii) large parts of the Victorian community being regularly left without MICA coverage;
(iii) a system that is dangerous and badly organised;
(iv) low morale and burnout amongst MICA paramedics;
(v) a disastrous rostering system;
(vi) insufficient funding to pay for shifts;
(b) an ageing fixed-wing aircraft fleet and issues that include:
(i) shortages in available aircraft due to maintenance;
(ii) an overworked and understaffed pilot workforce;
(iii) several pressurisation incidents;
(2) expresses concern at the proposal by Ambulance Victoria to cut:
(a) MICA units from regional communities, including:
(i) Bairnsdale;
(ii) Sale;
(iii) Shepparton;
(iv) Swan Hill;
(v) Wangaratta;
(vi) Warrnambool;
(vii) Wodonga;
(viii) Wonthaggi;
(b) single-responder MICA units from regional communities, including:
(i) Ballarat;
(ii) Bendigo;
(iii) Horsham;
(iv) Morwell;
(3) calls on the Allan Labor government to:
(a) properly resource Ambulance Victoria;
(b) immediately release publicly:
(i) the review into MICA by Ambulance Victoria’s quality and safety committee, including their recommendations; and
(ii) the independent aviation safety audit into Ambulance Victoria’s fixed-wing aircraft pressurisation incidents.
The motion is essentially raising many concerns around our ambulance service here in Victoria. There have been a number of reports over recent days and weeks that have highlighted some really very concerning issues that are occurring. Even today there are reports that our fixed-wing aircraft have been grounded or there is nothing available – no pilots available, so there are no fixed-wing aircraft available – from 11 am to 10:30 pm tonight. What does that mean? That means that Victorian lives are being put at risk when you do not have those services available. I think it is incredibly concerning that that is the case. I note that when the Minister for Ambulance Services herself was asked about this question in question time just now she gave a general sort of statement which anyone could read out of an Ambulance Victoria annual report that there is 24-hour coverage being delivered by AV’s fleet. That might be the case, but it is certainly not happening today considering what is going on and that it is being said that actually there are no pilots available and there are no fixed-wings. Now, I hope that that is not the case; I hope those reports are not accurate. But if they are, which I suspect they are given the information that is out there, this is a real concern.
It was only just a few days ago, on 28 January, that there were whistleblowers concerned over the maintenance issues around Ambulance Victoria aircraft. I want to just speak to this report where one paramedic said in relation to an incident when there was an issue with the pressurisation and breathing gear had dropped from the ceiling in midair – it was quite an alarming issue – that this is a common occurrence. These sorts of safety issues – well, in their words ‘a litany of safety issues’ – are happening all the time and plaguing the service’s fleet of four fixed-wing planes. Now, if those planes are grounded because they are not getting proper maintenance and if those planes are being grounded because we do not have enough staff to staff them, that is putting the lives of Victorians at risk. These are paramedics that are speaking out now. They are speaking out in droves because they have had enough. They have had enough of the government’s spin, the cover-ups and, quite frankly, the lies. They are doing all they can to care for the Victorian community, and they do an enormous job. They have been tremendous, and they continue to do that right across the state. But they are being let down. They are constantly being let down.
The motion that I am speaking to goes into these issues. It is around an ageing fixed-wing aircraft fleet and, as I said, the shortages in available aircraft due to maintenance, an overworked and understaffed pilot workforce and the issue I have raised around the several pressurisation incidents. My motion goes to this. I am concerned that since I read this motion in yesterday that this issue has arisen today. The very issues I was concerned about have eventuated today. But they are worse today because there are no fixed-wing air ambulances available in Victoria as I stand and speak right now. Now, I have had to use that service as a patient, coming from country Victoria, from my home, to go to St Vincent’s, just across the road. I have experienced it; I know what they do. I am a former nurse and midwife; I know what they do. I know how hard they work. I know the extraordinary care they deliver. But this is where we are at here in Victoria in 2023, where we do not even have coverage. I find it stunning, but worse than that I find it so alarming.
Then we get to the very real issue around our MICA paramedics. We have had a drop in MICA paramedics, in the numbers, and the annual report says that. We have got around 581. But now we have got reports that there are going to be shortages in parts of Victoria because of the government cutting the resources. Again it is whistleblowers speaking out who are saying that the MICA system is in crisis, the rostering system is dangerous and that there are multiple issues around what is happening in regional Victoria. Paramedics are saying there is no strategic plan on how to develop the service and the MICA service. The government says, ‘Oh, we’ve got a plan.’ Well, no-one has seen it. They are keeping it secret like everything else they do. These paramedics are saying that morale within the service is at a point where it is so low. I am reading from this report, and it says:
But the sources say morale is low and burnout more common because although they are trained to do the very serious cases, often they are sent to … minor incidents …
They cannot do that. That is a problem with dispatch, and I am hearing from constituents the most extraordinary stories around dispatch – four ambulances turning up for a broken ankle, while for somebody else who has had a very serious fall, no ambulance is available. Something is going wrong. It is not working. There are real flaws in the system, and there are real issues that are causing Victorians who need the service, who have paid their ambulance fees for years and years and years and who need it and expect it cannot get it. That is a common complaint that we hear of. I know Mrs Broad will speak to that, because she has been speaking to me about an issue in her electorate, in the Premier’s own seat, where there are no ambulances available – nothing. Patients are being told there is a 5-hour wait.
Mr Davis reminded me a few minutes ago that when we were in government and he was the health minister we put in four ambulance stations, yet nothing is available for that local community. So you have got real issues in the system, real pressures, that are actually impacting Victorian lives. Now, paramedics have said regarding the MICA shortage that the government is going to cut services in regional Victoria, so a MICA unit in a regional area might only have one person. Obviously they attend emergencies, accidents and other incidents and start the emergency care while other backup arrives. That makes perfect sense. I think we all understand that these are highly trained, skilled paramedics. But they are going to be cut, so that is going to leave a whole swathe of very large areas in Victoria without any MICA service.
The government says, ‘Well, we’re looking at the system, and there are no cuts.’ That is not what the whistleblowers are saying. They are saying that cuts are on the table. The government needs to rule out these cuts. These areas – and, Deputy President, they are areas that affect you – include Swan Hill, Bairnsdale, Sale, Wonthaggi, Warrnambool, Shepparton, Wodonga and Wangaratta. These areas are at risk of losing this MICA service that I have just spoken about, a very important service for those communities. What happens then? I mean, that is a very large area. When we think of those areas, let us just take Shepparton and Wangaratta – let us look at them, and Bendigo: if there are no ambulances there, that area is being left with absolutely no resource. So these are very severe and serious issues.
I wanted to raise the point about where the paramedic numbers have fallen to 581. I was just checking the number, and I am right – 581. They are falling. Paramedics are speaking out saying, ‘Well, things have to be so bad for me to be doing this.’ So they need the government’s attention on this. They are not just going out there and saying everything is okay. They are desperate, and they are needing that support from government. The government will say, ‘Well, we’re investing X amount,’ but there is something wrong with the way they are doing what they are doing. As I said, when you have got gaps in the MICA services and when you have got no fixed-wing aircraft servicing Victoria today, right now, then we have got a problem, and that is at the government’s hands. It is at no-one else’s hands in terms of what is going on.
The government in recent years has been blaming COVID. It cannot blame COVID any longer for these systemic failures. We need to be looking at it. We need a proper review into what is happening. What is happening in Ambulance Victoria? Why is their morale so low? Why are these issues constantly there? Why is Danny Hill, the union leader, saying it? He is saying how bad it is. He is saying how bad the morale is. He is talking about the issues, and he is backing up the paramedics’ claims. For the government to dismiss him I find quite extraordinary. I mean, he sits right beside the government, but of course he sits right beside his paramedic members more closely, as he obviously should. I just want to quote from what Danny Hill said the other day:
He also said there was no doubt MICA faced a crisis and the system was “absolutely dangerous”.
That is Danny Hill saying that. That is not me saying it through what I am hearing on the ground, it is Danny Hill. Again, I find it really alarming that there is at that level somebody saying it is absolutely dangerous. So when I say it is putting Victorian lives at risk, it is. And then we have got the wellbeing of the staff – and we have obviously had some tragic incidents amongst the ambulance service, which have rocked local communities – and the pressure that they are put under, the inability to have the support, and other issues that are arising throughout various communities in this state.
I just think that the minister needs to understand how dire this is, because there are so many situations where we hear about stories, whether it is 94-year-old Louise just a few kilometres away from the Alfred – falls over, broken pelvis, an ambulance cannot get to her. A non-emergency patient transport arrives, yet they tell her to walk through her house to get onto that non-emergency patient transport to be transported to the Alfred and then to be told she has got a broken pelvis – incredible pain, but very dangerous to have such an injury. It took her 40 minutes to walk through her house, the poor woman – 94. She had to walk through her house with a fractured pelvis to get onto a stretcher because an ambulance was not available just a few kilometres from the Alfred. I just find it extraordinary. I find all these stories heartbreaking. Of course we understand things happen. But these are not one or two stories; these are stories every single day that just demonstrate the depth of issues that are running, and this government has no ability to fix them. They just think throwing money here or doing that is going to fix it. No, it needs more than that. Of course it needs proper resourcing, but we need to actually look at and identify the issues. There must be serious issues.
While I am speaking on the non-emergency patient transport issue, that review has been done, and I have spoken about that in the house before. The minister has that; the minister has had that for weeks. Well, what is she doing with it? What is happening to the non-emergency patient transport sector? What are they expected to do? The budget is in just a few months time, and some of their contracts are running out at the end of June. Some have been extended. Some do not want to extend their contracts; they want out because they are sick of subsidising Ambulance Victoria. They are raising money through the goodwill of the community and basically subsidising Ambulance Victoria because it is so hopeless. And that is at the hands of the government; that is at the hands of the minister. We have had a rotating door of ministers. We had a minister last year; she lasted about three months, four months. Obviously she could not handle the heat, so she has handballed it back to Minister for Health. It should never have been split from the health minister in the first place. That just demonstrates to you what the government want to try and hide and cover up. Ambulance services of course belongs together with the health portfolio. I was arguing it at the time when the government split it, but they wanted to try and con Victorians, which they are very good at doing, and say, ‘Nothing to see here. That’s not my responsibility. It’s someone else’s responsibility.’ Having a rotating door of ministers does not help the community either and instil any confidence, and especially with a minister that is out of her depth.
As I said, my motion goes on to talk about cuts in those regional areas, but I did not mention the single responder MICA units from regional communities, including from Ballarat, Bendigo, Horsham and Morwell. As I said, those communities are going to be without those single responder MICA units, given what the whistleblowers are saying, and they are enormous areas of the state. We have to have those resources in place. We have to have an ability for our community to be serviced. We have got a growing population. We have got an ageing population. We have got a population that has been shut down and locked down for too long, and for too many their care has been deferred. They have not got the screening; they did not go to the doctor during that lockdown time. They are getting sicker, so there it is no wonder there is more demand on the system. Again, that is at the hands of the government. They made the decision to lock us down, not once or twice when everybody was understanding of that – six times.
The decisions made during that time and what we are seeing now – I cannot overestimate the impacts of some of those daft decisions by Daniel Andrews and his government. We are going to be paying the price for a long time, as I said, in deferred care and people getting sicker. And now we have got the government’s health tax. At a time when we are trying to rebuild we have got the government’s health tax that is hitting medical clinics – the GPs, the dentists, the allied health professionals – that is going to cause havoc across the health system, more demand on the ambulance services and more demand on our emergency departments. What is the answer? Urgent care centres. But go to the urgent care centre and it tells you on a notice to go to your GP.
I mean, the government has no idea how to manage health. They take the high moral ground on it, and they have actually buggered it up. We used to have the best health service in the world. Sadly, I am not sure we can say that anymore. It is no reflection on the hard workers in this state – the nurses and the doctors and everybody involved. They are doing their best. It is government policy and government decisions that have done this, and as a result, we are seeing failure after failure after failure, whether it is in the response times – and the Victorian Agency for Health Information data backs that up. The latest VAHI data – just last week it finally came out for the quarter ending 31 December – says that the median wait time for an ambulance attending life-threatening incidents increased from the previous quarter to 8.97 minutes. In the words of the former Premier when he was health minister, every second counts. Well, it sure does – 8.97 minutes. They are getting bigger, those gaps, those wait times. And to have no services whatsoever, to be told there are no ambulances for 5 hours, is a disgrace. No Victorian should be told there is no ambulance for 5 hours, not one.
This is an important motion; it goes to the heart of caring for our community and of providing services. But the state is broke, and for all Victorians to get proper health services is getting harder. I urge all members to support this motion to clean this mess up.
Ingrid STITT (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (14:48): I am very keen to make a contribution in relation to Ms Crozier’s motion, and can I put the government’s position up-front that we completely reject the premise of this motion. We are not reducing any intensive care services within Ambulance Victoria. We will always as a government deliver the resources that our paramedics need to do the incredibly difficult and important job they do, day in and day out. In some ways I ought to thank Ms Crozier for moving this motion, because it does give the government an opportunity to go through in some detail the investments that we are making to support our paramedics, our frontline AV staff, but also it gives us the opportunity to correct some of the misinformation that is being peddled by those opposite. For example, Ms Crozier made a fairly inflammatory claim – and indeed the motion goes to this point – that there are going to be no resources available through the fixed-wing aircraft AV operates. That is not true. That is absolutely incorrect, and the advice from Ambulance Victoria is that the fixed-wing planes are operating today, right now.
This is an example of the kind of misinformation and the frankly lazy policy approach that we are seeing more and more from those opposite, where they come in here and kind of float allegations about what is going on in particular parts of service delivery that the government takes very seriously. So I will take the time. I do not know whether Ms Crozier will stay for my whole contribution to actually hear about what we are investing in and some of the systems that we are putting in place that are going to be absolutely world-leading and game changing for our hardworking paramedics. I am glad that you were the one to raise David Davis’s time as the previous health minister, because when we think back to those times, we think back to when the government of the day, the coalition government, did not think twice about going to war with our ambos – calling them thugs, accusing them of manufacturing ramping allegations and inflating their pay in the media to try to turn the public against them. In stark contrast, our government will always listen to our paramedics and their representatives, work with them and give them the resources that they need. Whether it is our experienced advanced life support paramedics and our highly skilled MICA paramedics or the hundreds upon hundreds of graduate paramedics who have joined this important profession over recent years, this government values our paramedics and the life-saving work that they do each and every day.
When it comes to our ambulance services, I just do not think that the opposition has any credibility. When we came to government in 2014, our state’s paramedic system was actually on its knees. It was underfunded and it was undervalued – and there was no global pandemic going on then, by the way; it was just a system that was grossly mismanaged. In the last budget the Liberals handed down in 2014 there was a paltry $6.6 million provided in additional funding for our state’s ambulance service, with a total output funding of $696 million. Let us compare that to our government’s most recent budget. In the last budget alone we provided more than $120 million in additional funding for our ambos, with total funding for service delivery equalling nearly $1.4 billion. That is double the annual investment of those opposite when they were last in government, and now they have suddenly decided that this is an important issue for them.
We can proudly say that Victoria has the best funded ambulance service in the country, because we do value the workforce and we have invested in our paramedics. I will go through some of those stats because I think it is important for the house to understand where the investment is going that our government is providing. In 2014 when we came to government Ambulance Victoria had 3000 on-road clinical staff. Now there are more than 5000. That is a 58 per cent increase in the on-road clinical workforce – a 58 per cent increase in serving the community of Victoria right across the state. It is around 2000 more paramedics providing life-saving emergency health services to Victorians today than there were when we came to government.
But it is not just about numbers on the ground. We have also invested in the training, development and remuneration of our hardworking ambos because we value the work that they do. We have invested in new career pathways such as the novel medium-acuity transport service and our commitment to becoming the first jurisdiction in the country to introduce a paramedic practitioner service. This is something that is world-leading. Of course as we train and hire record numbers of paramedics we know we also need to upgrade the training facilities to ensure that there is sufficient capacity. That is why we have invested $10 million towards an Australian-first centre for paramedicine in partnership with Victoria University. The centre will focus on training the next generation of ambos, providing advanced teaching methods with the capacity to train around 1500 paramedic students each year. That is the kind of systemic investment that will rebuild our ambulance service off the back of the pandemic and give the community the support that they need. VU currently provides one of Australasia’s largest undergraduate programs in paramedicine with more than 800 students, and the new centre will continue the university’s partnership with Ambulance Victoria.
Of course our ambulance workforce is diverse and it is made up of a variety of specialist skill sets, including the incredible mobile intensive care ambulance paramedics, or MICA paramedics, who I might add have been providing mobile intensive care to Victorians for more than 50 years. These on-road intensivists do play a really critical role in attending the most urgent of cases in our community, and we on this side of the chamber are extremely proud of our government’s investment to grow this particular part of the workforce. When it comes to making sure that we have got a well-rounded ambulance workforce we have a strong record on this side of the house. In 2021 we introduced the innovative medium-acuity transport service. Just as our MICA paramedics support the most critical code 1 and code 0 cases, this important service is providing world-class care for our class 2 and 3 patients, with 22 vehicles on the road and 165 dedicated staff. The reason why this is an important service is it is helping to free up valuable resources to respond to the most urgent time-critical cases, allowing our MICA paramedics to focus on the critical care cases they have been trained for.
So we have seen historic investment in the first paramedic practitioner service in Australia. This is something that our government announced during the election campaign, that we would be providing additional investment in paramedics through the paramedic practitioner service, and that is something that can provide urgent care to patients who need it and eliminate the need for a trip to a hospital emergency department. Of course there are no prizes for guessing how that will alleviate pressure on the entire health system. We have invested $20 million towards that endeavour.
These commitments highlight our ongoing commitment to the paramedic workforce, and we acknowledge that it is difficult work that they do. We will always back them in. We know that there is more work to do to get us back to those prepandemic record response times, but our government has the plan to do that, and we will continue to back them in.
Georgie PURCELL (Northern Victoria) (14:58): I rise to speak in support of this motion today, but I must note that the government actually had to send me the opposition’s motion. They have not spoken to me themselves, which is very disappointing and does not really speak to their ambitions of passing it. But I did take the liberty of speaking to the ambulance workforce and their union, which is very accessible to me because I actually live with a paramedic and have for the best part of a decade. I have also been notified that the Ambulance Victoria fixed-wing fleet is grounded today from 10 am until 10:30 pm – no pilots, no planes – and it basically leaves Victoria’s aeromedical service dysfunctional.
Victoria’s MICA paramedics are some of the highest trained paramedics in the world. They can place you in an induced coma after a major car accident, an extremely high-risk procedure performed in hospital by multiple senior doctors and nurses. They resuscitate children who have drowned. They revert lethal heart rhythms, cut into your chest to fix a collapsed lung and administer adrenaline infusions for anaphylactic reactions. Some of my own election campaign volunteers are MICA paramedics, dedicating their working lives to helping the sickest and most injured Victorians in their darkest hours. But their skill and expertise are being taken for granted by a government who has let them down when they need our support the most.
To say Victoria’s MICA paramedics are burnt out would be an understatement. Their working conditions are on life support. Many shifts go unfilled; fewer crews and the same workload denies Victorians the intensive care they need and deserve. A key contributor to this burnout is what is known as clock stopping – trying to plug holes in the sinking ship of ambulance response times. Our broken call-taking and dispatch system, which the government is well aware of, unnecessarily overtriages minor calls to 000 as life-threatening emergencies, tying up ambulance crews with patients who often need little more than a GP. The government tells you to save 000 for emergencies, but it cannot even work out what is and is not an emergency, so it sends our finite ambulance resources on a first-come, first-serve basis to sore throats, cat scratches and cut fingers, with MICA paramedics standing in the lounge room of a young, fit and healthy person, their intensive care skills unavailable, as they organise a GP appointment. When this happens 10 to 15 times on a 14-hour night shift, it is not only wasteful, it is downright dangerous. And when their skill set is needed, it is unavailable. On Sunday night the only MICA paramedic in Hume was in Wodonga, covering all the way down to Wallan and across to Bendigo. When a MICA paramedic from Bendigo is treating a heart attack in Horsham, you have got serious problems in the ambulance service. On 27 January this year, at approximately 3 am, a dispatcher told crews there was no MICA for a 200-kilometre radius in Melbourne. To retain the highly skilled MICA workforce, the government must look at revised ambulance dispatch and take its own advice – save ambulances, especially MICA ambulances, for genuine life-threatening emergencies.
Ambulance Victoria’s latest annual report lists 525.7 qualified MICA paramedics. After nine years of a Labor government that vowed to end the ambulance crisis, a campaign that I worked on myself in the union movement, there are just 5.5 more qualified MICA paramedics now than in 2014 to 15, an increase of just 1 per cent, or just over half of one MICA paramedic per year of government. Even less than this number are able to be rostered due to significant physical and psychological injury, with many branch lines going unfilled in both metro and rural regions. It takes nearly five years to fully credential an independent and experienced MICA paramedic. Most have to take a pay cut to become MICA paramedics then face the pressures you have just heard – increased psychological exposure and burnout. You are right to ask yourself: why bother? The government must resuscitate Victoria’s MICA service, but it is not simply a matter of breaking and replacing MICA paramedics. They are not machines. The government must address their working conditions and pay issues. Has the government learned from the mass MICA resignation in 2009, or is history going to repeat itself now?
Our paramedics are still recovering from the exhaustion of the pandemic, which is not over yet. Their reward is to be smashed like a piggy bank by this government. Do they think our paramedics do not have mortgages, school fees or bills coming in too? Do you really want a MICA paramedic stressing over how they are going to make ends meet when they are about to place you in an induced coma?
The Treasurer flagged in the Age last month cuts to health and education in the upcoming May budget. Ambulance Victoria is already cost-cutting, with last year’s disastrous decision to cancel staff award ceremonies while hosting their own swanky event at Hotel Chadstone. Despite the blunder, the cuts have not stopped. Maintenance requests at branches are being denied due to lack of funding. In Mildura a branch with a collapsed roof had mould growing in the station. Despite opening in 2023, the Ararat MICA resource looks to be curtailed. Last week Grampians MICA paramedics were told they will not be paid to drive to Ararat and Horsham MICA vacancies. A 2022 government media release stated:
Our MICA paramedics are highly skilled, and Ararat’s new crew will ensure locals receive the best possible care.
Are these communities no longer deserving of the best possible care? An area with an ageing population, extreme agricultural injuries and major road collisions will have to wait for a MICA resource from Ballarat, if it is even available.
I am obviously not interested in pleasing the government at the moment, but I am very much in support of this motion today, even though it might not be perfect. I, and I am sure many Victorians, would much rather see this government pull money from their continuation of duck shooting in Victoria and redirect it into our health services that so desperately need it, because as the Labor government has continually reminded us, in an emergency every second counts.
Gaelle BROAD (Northern Victoria) (15:05): I want to thank Ms Crozier for presenting this motion. It certainly has the Nationals’ support. And I also want to thank Ms Purcell for outlining so many of the qualities of MICA paramedics and the many challenges that they face in the role and for her support of this motion.
According to reports in the Herald Sun, Ambulance Victoria is considering removing single-responder MICA units from regional areas, including Swan Hill, Shepparton, Wodonga and Wangaratta in Northern Victoria. Larger areas, like Bendigo, which are served by two-member MICA ambulances, would also be affected by the reallocation of resources. Despite ongoing ambulance delays, the Labor government is considering cutting back MICA services further, even though the most recent annual report shows the number of MICA responders has fallen.
Just two weeks ago a member of my family who lives in Victoria had their heart stop. They were at work at the time, and thankfully, another local just dropped in for a chat and was there when the incident happened. An ambulance was 45 minutes away, but within minutes a MICA arrived on the scene. They knew exactly what to do. Rather than sending them to the local hospital, they sent them straight to Bendigo Hospital and they followed behind. A pacemaker was put in the very next day. The actions and quick response of that paramedic helped save their life. This is just one story of someone that I know, but there are many, many more. On behalf of my family, I would like to say thank you to the MICA paramedics that serve our state.
According to news reports, MICA responders who are trained for complex and serious incidents face low morale and burnout and are regularly being called out to fill gaps in the regular ambulance service. This motion notes that Victorian lives are being put at risk by the ongoing crisis within Ambulance Victoria that has seen a reduction in mobile intensive care ambulance, or MICA, services, involving a drop in the number of MICA paramedics, large parts of the Victorian community being regularly left without MICA coverage, low morale and burnout amongst MICA paramedics, a disastrous rostering system, insufficient funding to pay for shifts and an ageing fixed-wing aircraft fleet with issues including an overworked and understaffed pilot workforce. Instead of cutting vital MICA resources the Allan government should be increasing services. Victoria’s ambulance union has agreed the service is in crisis.
A lady contacted my office recently, and I spoke to her again this morning. She reported that at 5 am on 23 January she phoned for an ambulance as she was experiencing abdominal pain. The service called back at 5:15 am to advise that no ambulance was available, that it would be a 5-hour wait and that a taxi could be sent to her premises to take her to hospital. But she was in pain and feeling very faint and did not want to pass out in the taxi, so she declined the offer and her son drove her to the hospital. This is a lady that has paid her ambulance service fees for years, and when she needed an ambulance, one was not there. When she arrived at Bendigo Hospital and told the staff that there were no ambulances available, they were very surprised because there were no ambulances at the hospital either.
Not that long ago I was contacted by a person, whose family live in Donald, about an elderly gentleman that had a fall in his own backyard 200 metres from the Donald hospital. He lay in pain on the concrete on his back in his backyard for 2 hours, waiting for an ambulance that was coming all the way from Horsham, and regrettably, that gentleman died the next morning.
Despite these issues, Labor are cutting services and resources across the state because the state is broke. Since it was elected almost a decade ago Labor has introduced 53 new or increased taxes and charges while blowing out Victoria’s debt to record levels. We are now the highest taxing state in Australia. But despite this fact the Premier has signed Victoria up to build the Suburban Rail Loop in Melbourne and said that there is no turning back. Jacinta Allan has called the first stage a milestone; I call it a millstone around Victoria’s neck. There are already 1000 people working on the Suburban Rail Loop project. By 2026 there will be 4000 and at the peak of the project 8000 people. According to the Parliamentary Budget Office, an independent assessor, this project is estimated to cost $200 billion, yet the federal government has only committed $2.2 billion. So where is the money coming from?
Labor cannot manage money and they cannot manage projects. They are boring ahead with the Suburban Rail Loop and digging our state deeper into debt while they cut services in regional areas. Our roads are not being maintained. We have 100-year-old bridges not being replaced. We have significant teacher vacancies. We have over 800 police vacancies. And now they are looking at cutting MICA services in regional areas. While they spend big on Melbourne projects, they are also hiking WorkCover premiums and expanding payroll and land taxes, all to go towards the debt. Victorians are currently paying $15 million every day in interest because of this massive debt. By the end of 2027 we will be paying $24 million every day.
Ms Stitt earlier referred to the need to listen to paramedics. Yes, we do, but also the government needs to be listening to the patients, because it is their stories that are telling the reality of what is happening on the ground. We are calling on the government to rule out any cuts to MICA services in regional Victoria and to properly resource Ambulance Victoria, so I am pleased to support this motion.
Sarah MANSFIELD (Western Victoria) (15:12): I thank the Liberals for putting forward this motion today. However, the Greens will not be supporting this motion. We do see a lot of merit in the concerns being raised by the opposition, and I have to say we were very, very close to putting our support behind this motion. Victoria’s ambulance system is undeniably overstretched and under-resourced. However, there are a few points in the motion that we have sought advice about that created sufficient uncertainty for us to be able to support it in its entirety in the absence of receiving any further evidence. Specifically, the motion calls for the release of two documents, one pertaining to a review into MICA that we have been advised may not actually exist – the review or the document – and the other about an independent aviation safety audit which has actually been released by Ambulance Victoria to aviation workers as far as we have been advised. Additionally, we have received conflicting information from different stakeholders about the claimed cuts to services in the motion. So based on this uncertainty the Greens are not in a position to support the motion.
However, I do want to speak briefly to the current state of Victoria’s ambulance services and how they are reflective of the way this government’s failure to adequately resource our healthcare system as a whole is creating increasing challenges for Victorians and their ability to access health care. I have spoken in this place before about the dangers of underfunding our preventative and primary care services. Trying to deal with conditions after they have developed is like putting ambulances at the bottom of a cliff and waiting for people to fall off, but in Victoria there may not even be an ambulance available to assist you at the bottom.
Issues with ambulance resourcing, which we hear repeatedly from paramedics and unions, are numerous. Our MICA paramedics are amongst the most highly skilled first responders in the world. I have had the honour of working alongside these incredible professionals, and I have to say there have been several situations where I could not have been more relieved to see them turn up when I have been stuck in a GP clinic with a critically ill patient. Their pay and conditions have been chronically underwhelming, which in turn has made it difficult to attract and retain workers. There are poor rostering practices, which we have heard about, and the inadequate call-taking, dispatch and triage systems are driving misallocation of resources and further feeding pervasive low morale and burnout. To further elaborate, the misallocation occurs because MICA services are attending call-outs that do not need their expert level of skill. That also means, though, that they are not available for call-outs where they are absolutely vital.
Many MICA shifts are also going unfilled, and we have heard about some examples of that from other members this afternoon. Now, I have been assured that there are increases in MICA trainees in the pipeline, but this is going to take years to flow through and to fill the gaps, and there is still a lack of a plan to ensure that this will increase workforces in rural and regional areas, which have always struggled to attract healthcare workers. A lot of it has to do with how we are thinking about building our rural healthcare workforce. Forcing people to commute or relocate is never a sustainable answer to rural workforce shortages. There is a dire need to invest in local workforces, local people, training them up and recruiting them where they already are right across Victoria.
While our emergency services are under strain, so too we are seeing cracks all throughout our broader health system. There are the forgotten areas of health care like prevention, dental care and primary care that are key to reducing demand on acute services. Community-based care like dental and primary care are essential to ensuring that the baseline health of Victorians is as strong as it can be. But when people are not able to access this, an illness like a dental problem that might have easily been resolved is much more likely to be exacerbated and then lead to someone needing to call an ambulance. When the proportion of the population experiencing acute illness rises, so too does the demand for emergency care. To keep people out of ambulances and away from the hospital system, we have to properly invest in prevention and community health care.
We also need to recognise that COVID remains a driver of excess demand. This is not just a catch-up as the result of deferred care post pandemic, COVID is still here; it has not gone away, and many thousands of people continue to get seriously ill, placing additional demand on services. Also, it is continuing to diminish workforce capacity because people like our paramedics are getting ill as well.
Yet because investment in areas of health like population health, primary care and prevention does not involve fancy openings with ribbon cuttings and hard hats or make for neat announceables, they remain chronically ignored and underfunded by this government. We will never be able to keep up with demand if we keep relying on ambulances and hospitals to deal with all our health issues. On the other hand, there will always be a need for emergency care, for paramedics and our MICA specialist paramedics and for air ambulance services. In a resource-stressed environment where demand exceeds the system’s ability to meet it, more must be done to support our paramedics, to improve efficiency in the system and to address rural and regional service shortages, and I urge the government to really, seriously take on board the many issues that have been raised as a result of this motion being brought to the Parliament today.
Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (15:18): For the second time today I rise to speak on a Liberal motion and for the second time today I rise to correct the record on this sloppy, shoddily put together motion. Just as this morning had some particular facts that were cherrypicked by the opposition to make a certain story look a certain way, here we just have absolute fictions in this motion. Starting with clause (3)(b)(i) that calls on the government to immediately release publicly:
the review into MICA by Ambulance Victoria’s quality and safety committee, including their recommendations …
What review? There is no such review. You are now calling us to release reviews that do not even exist. You then go on to call for:
the independent aviation safety audit into Ambulance Victoria’s fixed-wing aircraft pressurisation incidents.
I have it on good authority, though, that relevant workforces pertinent to that issue already have that information. So here we go again, just another shoddily put together exercise by a very sloppy opposition. As I understand it, they could not even be bothered consulting with the crossbench over their motion, so I do not think they even really want this motion to get up today. But seeing as we are here and here to talk about it, let us go through what has been put up here today. I am more than happy to talk about this government’s record when it comes to ambulance services. I am more than happy to talk about it, especially in contrast to those opposite.
First things first, it is very important to acknowledge the amazing work that all of our ambos do. They really are the heroes of our community. Every time I put up a post that is to do with ambulances, I will receive comments and messages from people talking about their experiences and how much they appreciate our local ambos too.
Mr Tarlamis is in the room. He joined me, the member for Cranbourne and the member for Bass just last week as we attended the official opening of Clyde North’s brand new ambulance branch. Right there is a perfect example of the work we are doing to deliver ambulance services to our growing suburbs right across Victoria. It is a fantastic facility – a four-bay station, which is actually larger than most, so there is plenty of the capacity for future expansion. The site has been up and running since its soft launch back in November, and it has already had over 3000 call-outs. That is 3000 call-outs being served in that community by that community by our fantastic new ambulance station, and it is a great thing to see as well as of course all the new schools, the new roads and investment in all the other services going into that area. The new ambulance station is fantastic to see.
Just up the road from Clyde North of course we have Cranbourne, and those opposite might recall – or might not like to recall – that in the 1990s they actually privatised the Cranbourne ambulance service. And it went so well that the privatised ambos were having to ask neighbouring publicly owned ambulance stations for bandages. You would not even give them bandages. You absolutely ran it into the ground. The architect of that policy, Mr Kennett, I see is now stomping around Frankston and meeting people in Karingal. I am not sure if that is going to particularly help the Liberal candidate in Dunkley, but if you think that is the best strategy, then you go for it.
I do not need to go back to the 1990s of course either, do I, to see an example of the hostile way in which those opposite have treated our paramedics? We saw it in the last period of government under the Liberal–Nationals when the health minister at the time, Mr Davis himself, went on the absolute attack. Rather than supporting our ambos he went to war with them. He undermined them, he went to war with them. He had absolute zero respect for our hardworking ambulance workers. He went to the extent of calling them thugs, liars, militant stooges – extraordinarily disrespectful. I would like to see him try and do the job. He called them stooges apparently because he accused them of staging a fake photo at Frankston Hospital – another hospital that this government is investing in with a billion-dollar rebuild that is currently underway, mind you. He accused them of a fake photo stunt at Frankston Hospital, which actually was not true, so he was levelling all these rubbish accusations just as they like to throw out unfair accusations in this place as well. He attacked them for staging a photo which was not staged, and I just have to say it is extraordinary because I think those opposite know all about that.
We have the alleged incident in Colac in the last few weeks. Does the member for Polwarth know? Does he have the connections? He tells everyone that he has the connections. Surely he has them. The member for Hawthorn apparently thinks that this is a serious issue worth looking into, but the member for Polwarth says it is not. So did the Leader of the Opposition even talk to the Shadow Minister for Emergency Services before this? Clearly not. Clearly he has got no respect for his own Shadow Minister for Emergency Services. Perhaps the member for Polwarth has got no respect for the member for Hawthorn. Let us face it, over there it is probably both. They have absolutely no idea what they are doing. This motion is another example of that, just as it was when they embarrassed themselves the other week as well.
Clearly they have very little confidence in each other over at the Liberal Party at the moment, but once again it just underscores the point that, whilst we have supported our paramedics in the 10 years that we have been government, those opposite as soon as they had the chance went to war with them. They called them thugs, liars, militant stooges. What a disgrace. What an absolute disgrace. When we stand here and we say that we support and we respect our paramedics, we mean it and we stand by it. Our $2 billion investment over the life of this government in our ambulance service is testament to that. It is also evidenced by the fact that the last quarter, so from October to December 2023, was the second-busiest quarter in this state’s history and despite this response times actually improved by 7 per cent over the last 12 months. Average code 1 response times are now under 15 minutes. Those opposite often like to forget this, but prior to the pandemic we had taken the response times from one of the worst in our history when we inherited government to the best response times on record –
Michael GALEA: You are clearly not listening to what I said, Ms Crozier. If you want to jump in halfway through, I suggest you actually listen to what I am saying.
The ACTING PRESIDENT (John Berger): Order! Mr Galea, we will have no debating across the chamber.
Michael GALEA: Thank you, Acting President. The point I am making, if Ms Crozier had been listening to my full comments, is that over the 10 years of this government we have invested consistently, and that is why the on-road workforce is 50 per cent higher today than it was 10 years ago. We have of course had enormous population growth in that time too, but the 50 per cent increase shows that this is a government that is not going to sit on its laurels and let whatever happens happen or attack the ambos while they are struggling to make their jobs work. This is a government that actually supports them and grows the ambulance service in line with demand, and I again reference the fantastic new Clyde North ambulance station, which is already up and running and is already very successfully providing excellent support for patients right across the south-east. It is another fantastic example of that.
As I say, on this side of the house we strongly believe in supporting our paramedics, not attacking them and then using them as cover for shoddily put together motions that we obviously do not even care enough about to consult with the crossbench about. You just want to be here to grandstand again, as you like to do on a Wednesday, but if you actually wanted to do something meaningful, you would be talking to more people. You would be talking to all of them. You would be talking to us. You would be talking to make sure that the issues that you want to raise can actually get addressed. But what issues? As I say, you are now just finding fake reviews and calling out things that have already been released to the relevant workforces. The substantial things that you are looking for – as I say, you have not done your work properly, just as you did not on the youth justice motion this morning. Picking apart random facts here and there does not constitute an accurate narrative.
Georgie Crozier: You are so out of touch.
Michael GALEA: What is out of touch, Ms Crozier, would be to call our ambulance drivers and operators militant thug stooges, when we are the ones investing in our ambulance –
Members interjecting.
The ACTING PRESIDENT (John Berger): Order!
Michael GALEA: Thank you, Acting President. This side of the house invests in our ambulance service. We will continue to do so. We have done so and we will always continue to do so, unlike the pathetic political stunts put up by those opposite, because we know not just from the 1990s but from the 2010s as well what they would do if they were to get into government again. We know because it is what they have done. In two consecutive Liberal governments they have gone on the attack. They have cut, they have privatised, they have taken everything out of the ambulance service that they could and they have done everything to undermine our wonderful paramedics and our ambulance system. On this side of the house we are resolute in our support for them. We will continue to invest what we need to invest as our state grows, and we are very proud of our record on that as well. Where there is more to be done we are doing it, and what I have talked about today is an absolutely perfect example of that. This motion is absolute rubbish. I do not commend it to the house.
Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (15:28): Well, I might just take the tone down a little bit and not stand on a soapbox and feign huge distress and feign a whole lot of things, going back in history into the last century.
I would like to put on record some of the stats. These are statistics that are available on code 1 performances in my Eastern Victoria electorate. Most unfortunately, on this metric, code 1 performance data, the ambulance service has gone backwards. We are not receiving our ambulances in a timely manner, and the facts speak for themselves.
Let me provide this data to the house. In Bass Coast the performance data for the third quarter in 2018 was 63.9 per cent of the time; in Bass Coast in December this last year just gone, 59.1 per cent. Baw Baw was 72.9 per cent in 2018 – it has gone backwards to 64.6 per cent. I will continue on: in Latrobe Valley it was 78.1 per cent code 1 performance, and it has deteriorated to 73.5 per cent. Wellington was 57 per cent, and now it has gone back to 52.7 per cent. East Gippsland was 59 per cent; East Gippsland last month, 53 per cent. South Gippsland was 50.8 per cent, and it has gone backwards to 47.8 per cent. These are facts, and this is showing how significantly stretched and overreached and quite frankly lacking in state government support our ambulance services are, and therefore there are looking to be those potential budget cuts and indeed cuts to the MICA units. And I note that in Ms Crozier’s motion 294, which I support entirely, the second part expresses concern about the proposal by Ambulance Victoria to cut MICA units from regional communities in my electorate, as specified in some of those sadly deteriorating statistics of Bairnsdale, Sale and also Wonthaggi, and also at that potential to cut first-responder units in the Morwell region as well.
Our litmus test for a service being operational and being well and healthy in itself is the lack of constituents coming in our door. Unfortunately, in the case of ambulance services – and we can throw ESTA in there for another headache about response times as well – I have had multiple people in recent times really frustrated with the services that are not serving the people of Victoria. I look at one of the recent instances involving a constituent and their son: a young man who was a farmhand, a farm operator – and good on him for doing that career – had to be ambulanced to the eye and ear hospital. He waited 8 hours – 8 hours – to be transported in pain and was eventually dropped at the door by a taxi at a cost to the government of somewhere around $1000. This is a young man working in an important industry and he has an injury – 8 hours. Whether or not that could have got to the serious point where he actually lost his eye, this is not what our young people need nor what we expect when we pick up the phone in an emergency situation and call for help. Interestingly enough and unfortunately when his time in hospital was terminated, he had to find his own way home. Thankfully, he has parents who are very important and very supportive and were able to support him and get him back home safely.
Another thing that is reflected in my electorate and relates to certainly the Morwell electorate is this funding of a Morwell ambulance station. There was a big sign up in the Morwell zone, in the place where it was to be built in English Street, and the sign has actually faded and fallen over. ‘We’re going to build this new ambulance station’, and it just seems to me that there are a lot of promises made, and certainly many people in our electorates are not receiving those estimations of those high promises.
There have been others: I know recently a gentleman was riding his pushbike and fell off his pushbike and was told that he could wait for a period of time – do not be moved but wait for a period of time – and it was a lengthy period of time until an ambulance came. Indeed his skin was punctured by the broken leg – a compound fracture would be the technical term – and he was told to wait exactly where he was. Well, he broke his leg in the middle of a road, so how sensible was it that he was told that, just due to shortages and stress.
I must say I have the unfortunate – or fortunate – experience of having firsthand knowledge of being on the inside of an ambulance a few years ago, and I cannot speak of it highly enough. When we, as human beings, are in our most vulnerable state – all my experiences have been very positive and calming, with reassuring professionalism. And only recently I was speaking to somebody who was a patient transfer operator. They have a very uncomfortable position. Whereas we, as those being transported, are always in a comfortable position, they are often bumping up and down. They often – and I am sure it is a common reflection – do not have lunch that day because they need to be in one spot, travel long distances in the country and get to where they needed to be.
In short, the government I think has been derelict in its duties in relation to supporting our state emergency services. We have seen it in the CFA and we have seen it in our hospital systems, where people cannot get a bed to save themselves. Thankfully, in the country all of the staff do the most amazing work to pool and to find solutions, but they are working uphill. I support Ms Crozier’s motion in the house today.
David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan) (15:36): I do not think anyone can deny that there are major issues of concern in the Victorian ambulance service, and over the last 30 years that I have been involved in health and community services it has been forever thus. We need look no further than the recent WorkCover inquiry or the services’ ongoing recruitment and retention woes to provide compelling evidence of this reality. Likewise, the submissions from Ms Purcell and Dr Mansfield provided excellent life experience of reality in the service.
I do not know how many people understand the nature of the work that ambos undertake. Some years ago I did a project with the New South Wales ambulance service and their union. We travelled all over New South Wales talking to union reps and to local management, trying to develop better consultative processes and to address the challenges that these workers face, and we spent many hours talking about the reality of life on the road. I learned firsthand that being an ambo is hard physical and emotional territory. Ambos and especially paramedics regularly encounter and must address scenes of heart-wrenching disaster, of folly and of tragic consequences, of situations where their exceptional skills literally mean the difference between life and death, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. And then, in a jarring contrast, they may next, frustratingly, find themselves for hours ramped at a hospital, waiting for the emergency department to clear while work that requires their skills and dedication is delayed or even goes unanswered. This is a difficult life that requires extraordinarily skilled and committed staff.
In this context it is deeply disturbing that a range of sensible improvements to the working lives of ambulance officers have largely been rejected by the government. The ambulance union is seeking improved occupational health and safety conditions, safer staffing levels and better protocols in control rooms, more flexible working arrangements and a pay rise that at least keeps track with the cost of living so that they do not become poorer for the privilege of their work – outrageous demands, aren’t they? To the government we say: if you value this critical workforce, you need to put your money where your mouth is.
But at the same time we should recognise that there are a range of factors, many of them arising from the pandemic, both past, present and continuing, that have hit many employers, including the ambulance service. Employers everywhere are struggling to find skilled staff, and it would be foolhardy to imagine that the ambulance service is somehow immune. There are some positive initiatives underway, which is great to see. Last year I attended a ceremony with Victoria University and Brimbank City Council to start the process of establishing a dedicated paramedic training school. Like all such initiatives, however, it will take time to establish and then to ultimately replenish the workforce, and as I said before, these are highly skilled and trained health professionals and such programs take time to bear fruit.
To come to this motion, we have not had much time to consider it, and that is a real pity. I mirror the comments of Ms Purcell and the Greens with regard to the lack of opportunity to discuss this motion before it was presented in this place. As I have said, there are patently major problems in the Victorian ambulance service. I think that it is regrettable that this motion is mainly restricted purely to MICA, as I am sure all ambos would agree that MICA only really works in the context of a well-organised service, appropriately tasked across the full range of required assignments and to look at their position in isolation fails to do justice to the complexities of the problems. In terms of the actions that are sought in this motion, we agree that the ambulance service should be resourced appropriately. Who wouldn’t? I doubt that anyone in Victoria would dispute this principle, but the question is: what does it mean? I am old enough and sufficiently steeped in the health industry to remember what adequate funding of the ambulance service meant under successive coalition governments going back to the Kennett days, and it was not pretty. As I mentioned previously, the motion seems to concentrate only on MICA and the air wing, and we all know that this is only a small part of the problem.
On the question of the documents sought, we accept on face value the undertakings provided by the government – that is, that there is no review into MICA by Ambulance Victoria that can be provided or that exists and that the safety audit by Pel-Air has been distributed to all relevant staff. In this regard it seems to us that the motion is basically mistargeted. Accordingly, we will not be supporting the resolution.
Sonja TERPSTRA (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (15:42): I also rise to make a contribution on this motion, motion 294 in Ms Crozier’s name in regard to the Victorian ambulance service. It lists a range of premises, which a number of speakers in the chamber today have disagreed with, and I also disagree with the premise of this motion for a range of reasons. But before I begin my contribution, I just want to do a big shout-out to all of our hardworking and dedicated ambulance service workers who work so hard each and every single day keeping Victorians safe. It is an incredibly difficult job working in our ambulance service or being a paramedic, because as we know they have to turn up in the most difficult of circumstances when Victorians need them the most.
A member: They are on our front line.
Sonja TERPSTRA: They are our frontline workers. Whether there has been a tragic accident, whether there is an accident in the workplace or a vehicle accident or whether there is a slip or a trip or a fall at home, our ambos are there when we need them the most and in a very calm and reassuring way. Just recently I was walking my dog near my house, and of course I am fortunate enough to have many friends in my neighbourhood. Not many people might have that, so maybe those opposite might be looking for some friends. I do not have that issue. I have got plenty of friends in my neighbourhood. But I did see an ambo call to the house of a person who I knew. We did not know it at the time, but an elderly resident had had a stroke. I have to say that the ambulance officers who attended that scene were the most calm and reassuring people. I was a stranger to them, and obviously I was concerned for the person who was being attended to. But they were very lovely and answered my questions. I just said, ‘Look, I know the person. Is there anything I can do? Has the person’s family been notified?’ et cetera. But they were lovely, calm, reassuring and took fantastic care of the person who was the patient and took them to the local hospital for them to be cared for in the hospital.
We rely on our ambulance services. They are very important part of our community and our fabric, and the people who do this job are just fantastic individuals. It takes a special kind of person to actually do this job. I know we have debated in this chamber before, even in regard to our emergency call takers – I could not imagine what it is to do this kind of job and this kind of work. It is the Allan Labor government who actually supports our frontline workers. I heard Mr Galea in his contribution earlier remark upon the attacks that happened under the Liberal government when Mr Davis was Minister for Health. Everyone in this chamber knows that the war on paramedics and the ambulance service that those opposite engaged in when they were in government was terrible. It took a Labor government to fix the ambulance crisis. We fixed that, and that is something we are very proud of. Our Labor government has a history of supporting not only our ambulance services but also our other health and frontline workers and funding our hospital services appropriately as well. I have great respect and admiration for our frontline workers.
In the motion that Ms Crozier has moved there is a false premise. It talks about that we are making cuts. I will go through some of the things that demonstrate that this actually cannot be the case, because we are investing in training new paramedics and the like. Why would we go and train people and make available free education and training for workers to be skilled in this field only to cut them? It does not make any sense. It does not make any sense to me, anyway.
Nevertheless, the motion does provide us with an opportunity to put some facts on the table. First of all, prior to the onset of the pandemic it was under this government that Ambulance Victoria recorded their best response time on record, which was nearly 10 per cent higher than what we inherited from the opposition when they were in government. This is on the back of the $2 billion investment that our government has made into ambulance services, which has seen our on-road workforce increase by over 50 per cent since coming to government. That is what I was saying about this idea that we are making cuts: why would we make cuts to something that we have invested so heavily in so we can have more paramedics and improve the service? As I said, as part of the investment we have increased the workforce by over 50 per cent since coming to government. As part of that investment since 2015 we have invested $279 million to deliver or upgrade 35 new ambulance stations across the state, with 16 others underway.
In the last term it was great to see the new Doncaster ambulance branch reopen. It is based at Templestowe. I attended the opening of that ambulance branch. Under the previous government there was a consolidation and closure of some ambulance stations. I know my local community, particularly residents in Templestowe and Doncaster and those areas, were very pleased to see the reopening of that ambulance station. As I said, I attended the opening of that ambulance station. At the time, Martin Foley was the Minister for Health and Minister for Ambulance Services, and we attended and opened that station. It is a beautiful, brand new, state-of-the-art facility. Having it based locally in Templestowe and Doncaster gives comfort to local community members. Having it there means that there is another ambulance branch, another ambulance service, located in that area. Again, we talk about response times, but those opposite closed ambulance stations, right? How can you get an ambulance somewhere if you do not have them locally based? It is a strange premise, this whole notion.
With those upgraded ambulance stations we also provide better working conditions for paramedics to ensure that life-saving emergency care is available for Victorians no matter where they live. As I said, if you want to improve response times, you have got to have more of those branches open and available to get the ambulances to where they need to go.
Of course ambulance services across the world have been significantly impacted by the pandemic. We know not only ambulance services but also our health and hospital system have been impacted by this. On Friday the minister released the latest quarterly data, which showed that it was the second-busiest quarter in the history of Ambulance Victoria, more than 30 per cent higher than prepandemic levels and only 400 code 1 cases short of the record from 12 months prior. Despite this, Ambulance Victoria’s code 1 response time improved 7 per cent in the past 12 months, with the average code 1 response time now back under 15 minutes. What this demonstrates is that this government knows and understands – when we need to make further investments, we do that. We respond appropriately to ensure that those service levels can be maintained, and that is something we do by listening to our hardworking ambos and responding as appropriate. Again, Ambulance Victoria is not reducing any intensive care services, and we will always deliver our paramedics the resources they need. As I said, we have invested since we came to office $2 billion – and since 2015, $279 million – to deliver and upgrade new ambulance stations. Again, what we can lay out in terms of facts just does not bear out in terms of Ms Crozier’s motion.
Victorians can be sure that the pipeline of mobile intensive care ambulance paramedics is strong. As I said, there are courses for people who want to go and train as paramedics. The government is supporting that. Last year we saw record numbers of MICA interns in training, and we will see a further boost in MICA numbers this year, all of whom will be placed across the state. There are 131 MICA interns in various phases of training today, and we thank all of them for their service.
Sonja TERPSTRA: Are you right there, Mr McGowan? It is just the groan. I thought, ‘What have you done – you injured yourself?’
In the last budget we delivered our election commitment, with $15.8 million in funding to train 40 additional MICA paramedics, which will continue to grow our MICA workforce. So again, the premise of this motion is just completely and utterly flawed.
I note the clock is running down and I will not get to make the rest of my contribution, but I know others before me have covered these topics as well. I just say that the motion is fundamentally flawed. It is poorly framed and based on false premises. I have laid out just some of the reasons that demonstrate we are not making cuts to ambulance services, and it is quite flawed. With all of the investment in training new MICA paramedics to come through the pipeline there is a strong pipeline of workers that we know will be well utilised in the ambulance service, giving Victorians comfort and confidence in the ambulance services. I will leave my contribution there, and I would not commend this motion to the house. We will be voting against it.
Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (15:52): I am not surprised the government will not be supporting this motion. The motion is going to the heart of the issue around patient outcomes, around caring for our community and around supporting our ambulance services. Clearly there are many paramedics that are speaking out now to the media, and not just one or two; there are many paramedics that are speaking out because they are concerned. They are talking about the dangerous situations that they are finding themselves in. They are worried about the resources that they have at hand, whether it is a fixed-wing aircraft not flying or whether it is ambulances that are not able to cover the regions that they want to work in, and they are supposed to be able to support those communities.
This is what this motion is talking about, yet the government keeps harping about what happened 10 years ago or last century. They are not interested in the outcomes for Victorian patients, and that is what really concerns me. This government does not care about patients. We have heard the examples. Mrs Broad spoke about what happened to her patient yesterday, waiting 5 hours in a large regional centre like Bendigo – 5 hours. How is that right in 2024 that no ambulance is available for 5 hours? How is it possible that there is no fixed-wing aircraft flying? There might be a chopper, but I am talking fixed-wing. There seems to be some contention about here. I am concerned that I might have misled the house – or has the minister misled the house? I am very happy to correct the record if I am wrong, but I believe I am right. Ms Purcell understood, and she stood up and spoke about the clear issues, having that firsthand from the contacts. She is clearly very understanding of the issues. I know people too that work in the system. They are doing their best, but they do want to have a look at those issues and not have them brushed under the carpet, like this government is doing.
The issues I raise are the issues that are being raised by paramedics. They are talking about low morale, a disastrous rostering system, a shortage in available aircraft due to maintenance, an overworked and understaffed pilot workforce and the mobile intensive care ambulance units that are going to be cut in areas like Bairnsdale, Sale, Shepparton, Swan Hill, Wangaratta, Warrnambool, Wodonga, Wonthaggi and – looking at those single-responder MICA units – in other regional areas such as Ballarat, Bendigo, Horsham and Morwell that will also be affected by the changes that are proposed. That is what the paramedics are saying. The government has just said that there is no review or there is nothing to see here. We need to understand what is going on. We have not got the non-emergency patient transport review. Well, the minister has got it; she has been sitting on it. But these are the things that Victorians expect. When the government says, ‘Well, we’re putting in record funding,’ but in actual fact the outcomes are getting worse, then there is something wrong, seriously wrong. So it is looking at what is happening. Where is this going? Is there waste and mismanagement?
We know the government cannot manage money. We know the state is broke. Look at our bottom line. Look at what is happening around the state. Look at the projects that have been absolutely blown to smithereens with their budgets. That money should have been directed into areas like health. I have been saying that for years, and I will continue to say it. I actually want to see better patient outcomes. Yes, we have got a growing population. But this population has grown in the last decade, and we have got an increasing complexity, as I explained before, due to the outcomes of COVID. So there are many issues. I am not saying it is easy, but I am not saying that the government has got it right, and I am sick to death of them spruiking that they are the only ones that know how to manage health when in actual fact they have buggered up health. The stories I continue to hear distress me no end, and they are the stories my colleagues are hearing the whole time. All we hear from the government are potshots about a former minister from a decade ago. I mean, that is what is concerning.
My focus is on patient outcomes, on these paramedics that are working in the system to ensure that they can provide the best care they possibly can, and they do endeavour to do that every single minute of every single day. I know that. It is not critical of them. It is government policy, government decisions and government budget cuts. I urge all members to support my motion.
Council divided on motion:
Ayes (15): Melina Bath, Gaelle Broad, Georgie Crozier, David Davis, Renee Heath, Ann-Marie Hermans, David Limbrick, Wendy Lovell, Trung Luu, Joe McCracken, Nick McGowan, Evan Mulholland, Georgie Purcell, Adem Somyurek, Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell
Noes (19): Ryan Batchelor, John Berger, Lizzie Blandthorn, Enver Erdogan, David Ettershank, Michael Galea, Shaun Leane, Sarah Mansfield, Tom McIntosh, Rachel Payne, Aiv Puglielli, Samantha Ratnam, Harriet Shing, Ingrid Stitt, Jaclyn Symes, Lee Tarlamis, Sonja Terpstra, Gayle Tierney, Sheena Watt
Motion negatived.