Wednesday, 9 February 2022

Health system

Ms KEALY (Lowan) (16:31): I rise today to grieve for all of the Victorians who are languishing on waitlists across the state, whether it is for elective surgery, whether it is to get the mental health support that they desperately need for themselves or particularly for their children or whether it is about getting a loved one into drug and alcohol rehab support. It is just simply disastrous when it comes to needing health care in Victoria at this point in time. It is not about the healthcare workers anyway, it is just not, because they have done an excellent job with disastrous support from a government that like to put out media releases, that like to say they are delivering things for health, but when it comes down to what people are actually experiencing they are letting every single Victorian down.

The people who come through my office are sharing those stories more and more often, and I even get emails from people who live in Labor MPs’ seats who are extraordinarily frustrated because their Labor MP will not listen to them, refuses to listen when they say, ‘We need help. We need it now. The healthcare system is broken, the mental health system is broken; don’t tell me it’s fine and you’re spending this money and you’re making it all better, because my experience is the opposite of that’.

I would like to just speak to the case that was raised in question time today, Tiana and Billy and their beautiful little four-month-old son, Malik. He is a delightful kid. He is full of smiles. He is just lovely. But his parents are just so worried for him, as you can understand. He is now four months old. He has been under specialist care at the Royal Children’s Hospital. They are doing an absolutely fabulous job, which they always do. They know that he needs to get surgery to repair his cleft palate. Tiana and Billy have been told that the best time to do this, the optimal time for Malik to get his surgery to repair his cleft palate, is from now up until about six months of age. The ramifications if Malik does not get the surgery now are significant and lifelong.

There is a tiny window of opportunity when these specialist surgeons at the Royal Children’s Hospital can provide the best possible outcomes for little Malik. That means that he can feed properly. I recall that Tiana when I spoke to her said she felt embarrassed sometimes walking down the street because Malik is tiny; he is a little tiny thing, and he finds it difficult to feed. He has got a special bottle that he uses which he chomps on to suck down the milk because he has not got the sucking reflex. There are amazing workarounds they have for kids who have got cleft palates, but they only work for a period of time. There will be a point in time, Tiana and Billy relayed to me, when they simply will not be able to keep up with his feeding needs. If he cannot keep up with his nutritional needs, then there is a high risk that he will fall behind in his development. That means that he could become mentally behind, physically behind, and you cannot necessarily catch up from that. That is why when the minister gets up and says, ‘Oh, we listen to the clinical advice and we don’t need to do elective surgery’, it is completely naive. There are so many prisms and so many different options when it comes to elective surgery, and it is not just people who are waiting for a cosmetic procedure, who want to get a nose job or something like that. This will make a lifelong difference to this little boy.

Malik, because of his cleft palate, has a lot of fluid that collects in his ear canal, and that causes hearing difficulty. He wears a little hearing aid over his head, which is like a headband so he cannot pull it off. As soon as he puts that on his eyes light up, he engages, he giggles. It is delightful to see. But he needs that surgery now, otherwise he is going to have permanent hearing damage.

How on earth is this deemed elective in the first place? I am hearing that from so many parents, not just across Victoria but across the nation. Why on earth is cleft palate surgery deemed elective anyway? These kids need it. We can do it so well in Victoria. We can change the pathway of this little boy. Why can’t the minister stand up for these kids in the same way that he listened to the community when IVF was banned? In the same way as when the focus groups said, ‘Hey, you’ve got to bring IVF back’, let us listen to the Victorian community, to the parents of kids who have got cleft palates, the ones who see every day that their little kid needs to get this surgery but are told by the minister they cannot have it. The surgeons say, ‘We can do it’. We have got the surgeons available. We have got the clinical teams available and the theatre staff. They were ready to go. They have got everything ready to go. All it takes is for the Minister for Health to actually say, ‘Yes, we will put the needs of these little kids first’. A four-month-old boy has every single right to get the surgery that he needs when he needs it. ‘Yes, we will make sure that we get elective surgery up and going for kids with cleft palates from tomorrow’—the minister could have said that today during question time. He could have, but what did he do instead? He went back to his age-old thing of being the minister for waffle and did not even respond to Malik’s case at all.

Ms Britnell: So disrespectful.

Ms KEALY: That is so disrespectful to a family who are living with this each and every day. It might be a passing moment of thinking, ‘I’m getting this question. I’ve got to think of some words to drain out my time but not actually answer the question and somehow throw a kick into the feds in there at the same time’, rather than actually responding and thinking it through: ‘You know what? They’re right. We need to get this done. I have the power to do it as the Minister for Health. I’m going to make a difference today. I’m going to show some leadership, admit I got it wrong and allow all children in Victoria to start getting cleft palate surgery from tomorrow’. But he did not, and that is reflective of this entire government, because they like to do the big headline, the media release. They like to say, ‘Oh, we’re delivering so much for every Victorian. Look what we’re doing. Here’s the numbers. We’re great’. But you peel it back, and you know what? Victorians are not getting the health care they need.

Even when it comes to the actual investment in health, we found out in the past week from the Productivity Commission that we are underdone in Victoria. We have got the lowest spend per capita in the entire nation when it comes to investing in health care. When the government gets up and says, ‘We’re doing so much. We’re spending so much money’, guess what? You are spending less than every other state. You are actually getting less in Victoria if you want health care than if you live anywhere else. I know there is a great degree of resentment when it comes to how New South Wales have handled the pandemic, but this is not about the pandemic. This problem was happening years ago. It was happening back when the now Premier was the Minister for Health, which he was for three years. Now he has been Premier for eight years, so he has had jurisdiction and oversight over Victoria’s health system for 11 years, and yet today we see 80 000 Victorians on the public system elective surgery waitlist—80 000 Victorians in the public system. There are even more in the private system. There are an additional 1000 Victorians being added to that list each and every week. It is a disaster, and we can start to work towards it if the minister listens to what is going on and starts addressing this simply through changes.

We saw a video doing the rounds just yesterday: a surgeon taking a selfie video in his theatre, saying it was 2 o’clock and he was there ready to go and his theatre staff were ready to go. Nothing was stopping him from going ahead and doing more surgery—replacing knees and hips and doing other vital surgery, like the cleft palate surgery that little Malik needs. Do you know what was stopping him? The Minister for Health and the Premier. Now, why are they doing that? The question has to be put: why are they doing it? Because it is all politics. It is control and politics, and we see more and more of that and less and less real support delivered to the Victorians that need it.

We have also had massive problems come through my electorate office in regard to people not being able to access an ambulance when they need it. I was astounded to see the story that was in an email that came in from Leighton of Woodhouse. Woodhouse is just out of Hamilton near Penshurst. It is a tiny little area. His wife had been in hospital, she came home and she needed critical care in the middle of the night. Leighton called the Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority, called the ambulance service. They said, ‘Look, we’re busy but we’ll get back to you in 30 minutes’. After 35 minutes he called in again. He was told then—it was escalated to someone higher up the food chain—‘I’m sorry, we’ve got a waitlist of about 100 people waiting for ambulances. I’m sorry, we cannot get anybody to you at this time’. Now, for that situation it just beggars belief that there would be 100 people waiting in the Hamilton district for an ambulance. I do not think that is correct, unless they are sending ambulances out from Geelong or Melbourne. It just does not add up. But for those people, when you are at home in the middle of the night and your wife is critically ill, and you are told an ambulance will come and it does not, that is just mental anguish that you cannot deal with. That is the impact of these decisions to not manage a healthcare system the way it should be managed.

It is not just the people at the end of the phone, it is not just the people waiting for surgery; it is all of our healthcare professionals as well, because they are so frustrated. They want to do better, and this is particularly emphasised in the mental health workforce. They are absolutely stuffed after two years of helping and supporting people who mentally have not been able to cope with the restrictions. Whether it is about not being able to go to school, or parents, particularly mums, who are trying to work from home, supervise their children’s remote schooling and manage everything else that they have to in their household without getting a break. We know that women have borne the brunt, and so much evidence shows that women have done it hardest over the pandemic.

It does not make any difference who you are, you cannot get a mental health worker to see you. There is simply no-one in Victoria. This is not a problem that was created overnight. This is not just something that arrived when we saw the tome of the report from the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System. That was not when the crisis started. The government had been in for seven years at that point in time, and yet we have still got people who have to wait over a year to see a specialist paediatric psychiatrist for their child who simply cannot get out of bed, will not talk to anybody anymore and refuses to go to school. They cannot go to sport and cannot do any of the things they used to, and the trauma of being cut off from their friends and their family is profound. They need that mental health support now, but there is no-one there for them. You cannot even get a counsellor, and the government’s funding for mental health support in schools is just not working.

Every single thing that they have got is limited in some way. The mental health practitioners in schools do not include counsellors. We twice raised a private members bill in this place to include counsellors, and twice the Labor government voted against it through sheer pigheadedness and stubbornness. This would have been a way to make sure that you are not just funding mental health practitioners in schools, you are actually filling the positions and providing support to kids. Surely that is the bit that is important. That is the bit that is important, not just your media release saying ‘We’re putting a mental health practitioner in every school’. Who cares if there is no-one actually delivering in the role? It is pointless. The School Mental Health Fund is not being delivered in metropolitan schools until 2024. It has been delayed until 2024. Metropolitan kids have done it tough. They have had their playgrounds closed, they have had their schools closed, they have had 9.00 pm curfews and they have had their sporting clubs closed. They still have to check in now. We went to an AFLW match last night; you still have to check in and show your vaccination status.

There is this looming feeling their vaccination is going to be mandated very, very soon, or again they will not be able to go to school and will be cut off from their friends. This has all been researched prolifically by the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. It is research that is funded by the Victorian government. It was first published back in 2020—two years ago now—and yet the government is still not taking notice and understanding that the impacts of restrictions on our children have far greater ramifications on their learning and development and their future prospects in life than does focusing on them not getting the virus. They do not transmit the virus as superspreaders, which has been proposed by some leading politicians, which is appalling. Kids are not superspreaders. That is reflective of the number of cases in the community. Read the Murdoch institute’s research papers. Honestly, everybody should; they have got so much good information in there. The government should listen and take heed, because if you do not put the mental health of our kids first, we are going to have a generation that is going to suffer from the trauma of this period for years and years to come, if not for their whole lives, and there is still no mental health workforce to support them.

There is no way you can get into a residential rehab bed at the moment. It is extraordinarily difficult, and so many people have turned to drugs and alcohol to support themselves to get through the pandemic, particularly, again, women. Women are drinking at higher rates than they ever have before. The rate of women who have died with alcohol in their system at home alone is higher than it has ever been before.

On another matter, we look at the suicide rate. Now, I know you say, ‘Oh, there’s not an increase in suicides’. It is just horrible that anyone would even think that the pandemic response has been appropriate because suicides did not go up. I mean, what a damning thing to measure success by. The Coroners Court of Victoria said 10 per cent of suicides last year were directly related to COVID restrictions. That is horrible—10 per cent of Victorians have considered committing suicide or self-harm because of COVID restrictions in the past year. The government made disastrous decisions over the past two years, and we have been left with a hospital system, a healthcare system and a mental health system that cannot keep up. This has to change. We can no longer just get media releases as a bandaid for a problem and statements that are, quite frankly, rubbish. Listen to Victorians. They deserve a healthcare system they can access, and they deserve it now.