Wednesday, 29 May 2024

Department of Treasury and Finance

Budget papers 2024–25

Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (17:17): I rise to speak on the budget for this year, and I particularly want to speak on the health outputs and, importantly, the ambulance services outputs in the budget. Around about a quarter past 2 today I received a call from a constituent in Shepparton to say he was at the hospital and there were eight ambulances ramped at the Goulburn Valley base hospital. He actually took a little video which he sent to me that I have posted on social media. He then told me when he sent me through that video that he had just left, but as he was leaving there was a ninth ambulance arriving at Goulburn Valley Health. It is absolutely appalling. This comes very shortly after an incident that we had on 7 May. In fact at 1 o’clock on 7 May as the Treasurer was getting to his feet to deliver the budget – a budget that cut $207 million from public health and $20 million from ambulance services in Victoria – I received a call at my office from a constituent who had been waiting at the emergency department with her daughter since 7 am. At 1 o’clock they still had not been seen. She told me at that point that there were nine ambulances ramped at Goulburn Valley Health at 1 o’clock on budget day. Another constituent counted them later in the day and rang us to tell us there were 13 ambulances ramped at Goulburn Valley Health that day. Even the Victorian Ambulance Union tweeted about it that day. They posted a video similar to the one that I posted today showing those ambulances ramped, and the ambulance union said:

Dont get sick in Shepparton, Mooroopna, Tatura or Numurkah …

or Cobram. They said:

All of your ambulances are currently ramped at Goulburn Valley Hospital.

This is due the government not supporting our health network. We know that in Shepparton our health professionals do a tremendous job, but they do it under great stress. They do it under conditions that are not adequate, also they do it with very few staff. We know at Goulburn Valley Health they are about 550 staff short. More than 200 of those are nursing staff, yet this government will not invest in a clinical health school in Shepparton that would help to train more health professionals and boost our health workforce. We know we need more people at Goulburn Valley Health, but we also need stage 2 of the hospital completed to make sure that we have a service that is of a size that is adequate to service the demand that comes from the Goulburn Valley region.

This government is making it harder for Victorians on every level, whether that be economic with the cost of living, whether it be by making home ownership harder to get into because their policies are driving up the cost of a home or whether it be with access to education through their taxes on schools. They are just making it harder for everyone, and they are making it harder to get adequate health care for your family because you cannot get the service at the local hospital you need. Amalgamations of hospitals will only add to this. If they amalgamate every hospital in regional Victoria into the six services that they say, Shepparton – Goulburn Valley Health – would manage a number of hospitals as far away as Albury–Wodonga, Mansfield, Bright and Mount Beauty. This would be a disaster for local health services. Local health services want local boards that concentrate on the health needs of that community. They do not want to be managed from far afield, and of course Goulburn Valley Health are having enough trouble as it is managing their own shortages and servicing the people they need to service at the moment. Without an adequate health workforce we will see the closure of smaller country hospitals under this amalgamation as they bring the services and the staff from those hospitals back into the larger hospitals that are eating up demand.

This government is making it harder for Victorians. They need to look their policies, and they need to change them.