Wednesday, 11 May 2022

Matters of public importance

Health system

The SPEAKER (16:01): I have accepted a statement from the member for Gembrook proposing the following matter of public importance for discussion:

That this house expresses concern that Victoria’s health system is in crisis and notes that Victorians should not trust what the Andrews Labor government says and instead should look at its actions, including that despite making many election promises it has:

failed to complete any of the 10 community hospitals it promised in 2018;

failed to turn the sod to start the Melton hospital it promised in 2018; and

failed to turn the sod to start the Maryborough hospital it promised in 2018.

Mr BATTIN (Gembrook) (16:01): At a bare minimum, when they go to an election and they make a commitment, you would expect that the government elected would deliver, that they are going to deliver on the promises that they have made, not to people in this chamber but to communities all around the state. That includes, first and foremost on that list, the failure to complete any of the 10 community hospitals promised in 2018. That means the communities of Craigieburn, Cranbourne, Pakenham, Phillip Island, Sunbury, Torquay, the City of Whittlesea, the Eltham area, Point Cook and Fishermans Bend all were misled on what they were going to get from the Labor government. The Andrews Labor government promised them all a brand new community hospital with a $675 million investment. So far, of the 10, none are complete. How many have actually started? One—one of 10. So it is about 1 per cent, you are going to say, of the delivery of their 100 per cent commitment, which was going to be ready by the 2022 state election.

In Victoria we already know we have a health crisis. We have a 000 crisis. I will have to clarify some numbers here. One per cent: if you have got 10 hospitals you have promised and one was completed, that would be 10 per cent; if you have only just started one, that would be 1 per cent. You have delivered 1 per cent because you have not actually turned the sod yet. You have only done a plan. You have got to complete some of these hospitals before you can come out and say, ‘I have done 10 per cent’. When Victorians went to the last election and voted, they were voting on the fact that in these areas they were going to get a $675 million investment in community hospitals, of which none have been completed. How can you trust this government when they now put in another budget just before an election—the record they are talking about within health funding—when they did not deliver what they promised last time? They totally failed.

Out in my area, Pakenham—I note the member for Cranbourne is here—and Cranbourne are state areas that desperately need the support of community health hospitals that they were promised. They desperately need places to go because the hospitals are already packed. And I note the member for Narracan, who is not here now, will speak openly about the Warragul hospital and the failures in what is happening in getting investment into Warragul hospital.

We all know the pressures that are on our health system through the entire state because of a failure to invest for such a long period of time. We are seeing the impact of that now because ambulances are ramping at the hospitals nearly daily—39 last night, and another code orange. That is because we have not got the health facilities here in Victoria to ensure that we can protect Victorians and have the health services they deserve when they need them.

I will go to one of the other hospitals that is on this list. I note first of all that the member for Ripon, I know, would love to be speaking on behalf of her community about this matter of public importance today. In fact I would put it that this MPI would have been in the member for Ripon’s name if she was not off with COVID. I have spoken to the member for Ripon about this in the past, and she is rightfully angry on behalf of her community. Why? Because her community is angry. They have been ignored for too long. They were promised on Wednesday, 31 October 2018, the building of a world-class hospital in Maryborough. The Andrews Labor government promised this hospital within the term of government. And what was even better at the time was when the member for Ripon came out and said that we, the Liberal-Nationals, would build a hospital in Maryborough and we would have it opened and ready to go by 2026. The Andrews Labor government, under the name of the Treasurer, put out:

The Victorian Liberals and Nationals has now confirmed they will cut services, privatise assets, sack workers and stop building the infrastructure Ripon needs.

They have revealed a massive $39 billion budget black hole …

And it went on to say that the member for Ripon:

… in a mad rush …in front of the camera … committed $100 million to transform Maryborough Hospital, however yesterday’s costings have revealed only $40 million has been allocated towards this much needed upgrade.

The difference between the member for Ripon and the Andrews Labor government is that the member for Ripon was being honest. She said, ‘We’ll have a hospital open by 2026’. The Andrews Labor government wanted to put out a media release to say the member for Ripon was undercutting and ripping off the great community of Ripon, whereas what she was doing was what all members of Parliament should do—being honest in the commitments that she made. She knew that the hospital could not be built—planned, constructed—in a four-year period. Yet the Andrews Labor government wanted to put material out through that entire electorate to say that the only person that was wrong on this was the member for Ripon. Let me assure people as they go to the ballot box on 26 November this year—and I hope people all the way through Ripon have seen what we have been talking about here today: the Labor government blatantly misled you with documents in your letterboxes, with money through advertising and in the news. The Premier of this state went up there to confirm that they were going to deliver a hospital and you would be able to be seen by a doctor by that election date. If you cannot be seen by 26 November—this November—then you have been misled as a community. And you deserve better.

Ms Britnell: Ripped off.

Mr BATTIN: You have been absolutely and utterly ripped off by a government that has failed every step of the way when it comes to the crisis of health here in Victoria.

There is one thing across this state that Victorians deserve every day. They deserve confidence that if they ring 000 the phone will be answered within 5 seconds for all emergencies. They deserve that confidence. That is not there. I note the Premier today tried to blame COVID for everything in relation to health. If COVID was the reason that people were not answering the phones for the last six, seven months, why did the Andrews Labor government cut call-taking staff by 2.3 full-time equivalent staff over the last two years? If the problem was an increase in calls, the logical answer would be an increase in staff, but what we have seen by their own reports—not our reports, not numbers that this side are making up, but the government’s own published reports—was a 2.3 full-time equivalent cut in ambulance call takers alone. That means in every shift they have effectively got one less person.

The staff in there—and I note the Premier likes to turn it around and turn it political—are amazing. The stress that would be involved in that job on a normal day if everything was perfect—if every call was answered in 5 seconds, if every time the computer system worked perfectly and if every time there was an ambulance waiting at the other end to dispatch, it would still be a stressful job. Imagine picking up that phone as a call taker and they have been on hold for 15 minutes. We have heard too many times the last words of a daughter saying, ‘I love you’. We have heard the words of a mother saying, ‘Breathe, Alisha, breathe’. We hear this continuously. It is now so common—and I hate to say this—it is almost getting to the stage that it is not even a front-page story in the news. That is a problem. That is because the system is in such a crisis.

After the phone is answered the next thing you expect—what every Victorian expects—is an ambulance is ready to be dispatched to you. Now, metro, regional, peri-urban—where you live is going to impact on when an ambulance is going to arrive. No-one in this chamber would ever argue with that, because you cannot have an ambulance within a set period of time for every household. I know we have got a few regional members here. It is harder, it is tough. What we do not accept is when there is actually no ambulance to dispatch—when the call taker passes it to dispatch, it goes through the radio operator and they have got no ambulance they can call. They cannot say, ‘An ambulance from Beaconsfield, can you go and assist in Pakenham?’. They are busy because they are tied up. They cannot say, ‘Narre Warren, can you head over to Cranbourne and give them a hand over there’, because there are none available.

That is a massive issue here in the state, and that is because they are ramping. That is because they are off the road. Ambulance officers, paramedics—I have never worked in that role, and I know that the member for Melton will get up, who has. Can I say to every paramedic: thank you. It would be a stressful job. Going to a house where someone has died or is on the verge of death, going to a place where the family and friends are—the stress in that place is already enough without knowing you are turning up 30 minutes later than what should have happened because there has been a failure to invest in the systems to ensure you get there on time. We cannot have that here in a First World country. It simply does not work.

The third thing you must have confidence in here is that when you get to a hospital—whether in the back of the ambulance or the back of a cab or an Uber these days, from this government, or you get driven down by someone in your family—you must be seen to in an appropriate time. The nurses, the doctors—the staff—work tirelessly to make this happen, but they do not have the resources, they do not have the investment and they do not have the support to ensure that they can deliver these services. At Casey last week we had wait times of over 7 hours—7 hours in emergency. That for a sore toe is not good enough. That for people who are going in for urgent treatment is woeful, it is unfair and it should not be happening. Why shouldn’t it be happening? It shouldn’t be happening because the government should have invested at the right time to ensure that we can fix these systems.

There are people within the health sector at hospitals, in our ambulances and at 000 that will have the answers on how to make this better. It did not necessarily take the Ashton review, or the Ashton report, which we cannot hear about. It is a little bit secret at the moment. But the one thing I will ask on that Ashton review is: who did they speak to in 000 to ensure they got all the details of what was happening in the 000 network? Because not every staff member could put a submission forward and not every staff member could actually say what is happening on their duties, on their jobs. Not every staff member had an opportunity to have a say. It was only those selected by Graham Ashton and the senior management.

Now, I do not want to put a conspiracy theory out there, but every person should have had the opportunity to speak out. What a great way to silence those that are talking where the biggest issues are other than saying, ‘You can’t have a say’. Danny Hill came out from the ambulance union and said they must have a say. We have come out and said they must have a say. If this report is to be true, number one, it has to be released, and number two, every member has to be able to come out from within ESTA and speak openly, honestly, on the record. Because if you keep hiding the problem, it is only going to get worse—and the fear going forward.

I know the Premier spoke about it as a dad; I am going to speak about it for the families that have already lost someone. The fear that they know someone else in the community could go through what they have gone through—on hold for 15 minutes or more—would be absolutely gut-wrenching to them. They want to know from the government that their lost one was not in vain. They want to know that we are taking lessons from what happened for each and every one of them, and if someone works at 000 or ESTA and took one of those calls and identifies a system to fix it, we should be listening to them, not silencing them. The government needs to come out to fix our health crisis, and the way to fix it is not media releases around hospitals not delivered, around community health not delivered, around things that it is going to do out in our communities that never get done. It is about actual action, working with those that are experienced in the systems and ensuring our health system crisis is fixed.

Mr McGHIE (Melton) (16:17): It is a pleasure to rise today to contribute to this matter of public importance (MPI) submitted by the member for Gembrook. It has been a great week post budget, certainly out in Melton talking to the locals about the Andrews Labor government delivering for our electorate. The community is over the moon to see that the Melton hospital is being fully funded in this year’s budget. It is fantastic and has been well received by our constituents. So everywhere I go this is what people want to talk to me about—that is, about the funding for the hospital and when we will start building the hospital—and I am taking every opportunity to spread that fantastic news. The Labor Party whip’s office is already sick of me trying to get put on the list for speaking opportunities to talk about the hospital time and time again, and I will continue to do that.

I want to start off my contribution today by thanking the member for Gembrook for giving me a free kick. I will grab the opportunity to talk about the new Melton hospital every chance I get—and you can be assured I will continue to do that until we deliver that hospital and we open it up in the near future. This budget delivers for Melton and the west by delivering massive health infrastructure projects, and this will be the biggest infrastructure project in Melton ever. It also delivers new schools and massive education infrastructure upgrades, which is just as well because the member for Gembrook might need some education because he must have trouble with reading and comprehension. The member for Gembrook in this MPI claims that the Andrews Labor government failed to turn the sod to start the Melton hospital it promised in 2018.

Now, let us talk about those promises, shall we? Let us use this opportunity for what our brilliant educators would call a teachable moment. I was of course the candidate for the seat of Melton in 2018 with only three weeks notice. I got, as some said earlier today, parachuted in with only three weeks notice. It was interesting. So I had to pack the caravan up and come down to Melton and campaign for three weeks. The number one thing that everyone wanted to talk about with me was the Andrews Labor government’s commitment to the Melton hospital. And do you know what that commitment was? The brilliant, compassionate member for Altona, who was the Minister for Health at the time, came out to Melton to announce that a re-elected Labor government would commit $2.3 million to develop the Melton hospital business case. It might come as a surprise to those opposite, but we won that election in a landslide. Why did that happen? Because the Victorian public know that the Andrews Labor government delivers on its commitments. And the next year the Treasurer delivered the $2.4 million in the budget.

Members interjecting.

The SPEAKER: Order! I just ask the member for Melton to pause. The beginning of this MPI was conducted in a fairly good-natured way with little interjection. I hope that continues, otherwise members might be asked to leave the chamber for the duration of the debate.

Mr McGHIE: Thank you, Speaker. As I said, the very next year the Treasurer delivered the $2.4 million in the budget, which was more than what was promised, and we backed that in further in December 2019 with the announcement that the future Melton hospital would be managed and operated by Western Health, which was fantastic—a further commitment to Melton and the west that we will deliver. The next year, in budget 2020, I was successful in seeking from the Treasurer a further commitment of $75 million to acquire the land for the new hospital to be built on—another delivery on our commitment. In July 2021 the Andrews Labor government identified land in Cobblebank, which is down south, for the new Cobblebank railway station that we have built and is very much an activity centre now and began the process to acquire that land—once again a delivery on the promise. We backed that up in December 2021 with the notice of acquisition. Of course all the naysayers, including the Leader of the Opposition, were whingeing about us not having the land when we already owned it. I think he may have had a press conference out there talking about how we did not own the land, and we knew that we already did.

In 2022, after delivering a brilliant budget, we have the Andrews Labor government once again delivering for Melton and the west and all of Victoria by putting its money where its mouth is and committing to fully funding a new Melton hospital. This is a government that delivers not just for Melton, not just for the west but for all Victorians. And do you know what else I remember as a candidate in 2018? I remember that the Liberal candidate for Melton and the coalition had nothing to say about the hospital. They had little else to say about Melton at all. Actually I was surprised they even knew where Melton was. I remember that those opposite had no commitment to building a hospital in 2019, when we delivered $2.4 million, and they were quiet when we announced in December 2019 that Western Health would operate it.

We were met with silence in 2021 when the Treasurer delivered the $75 million to acquire the land, and they still had not committed to even supporting building a new Melton hospital. Of course in December later that year, 2021, the noise of the crickets living in the land in Cobblebank that was acquired by this government was louder than the deafening silence from the opposition about committing to a new Melton hospital. And when did we actually hear from those opposite? When did they finally commit to supporting a hospital in Melton? Well, I have here a media release from the City of Melton dated 20 January 2022 that they:

… welcomed the news that a Victorian Coalition government will build the Melton Hospital if elected.

Well, good luck with that. I am happy to table this document if you wish. Let us look at it—

A member interjected.

Mr McGHIE: Table it, you reckon? The date: 20 January 2022. Guess what? That was 1177 days since the 2018 election campaign began, and it was 42 days since the acquisition of the land and since it was gazetted. So 42 days after the government acquired the land the former Minister for Planning, the now Leader of the Opposition, who should know better, finally came out and committed to building a hospital in Melton—not during 2018 in the election, not all the way through the pandemic when they were criticising our vital healthcare workers, not during a global pandemic when the focus was on health. The Shadow Minister for Health was too busy attacking healthcare workers and talking to conspiracy theorists to think that it would be a good time to commit to supporting new health infrastructure. No, no, no; of course not. They waited until 42 days after we had acquired the land to come out and support this investment. They should have headed down to Specsavers, because the writing was well and truly on the wall by the time they finally came out and committed to a new hospital. They waited while we got on with the hard work. We got on with doing the job even through a global pandemic before we heard boo from them.

They are hypocrites. They pretend to support the west, but they do not, and they never delivered anything for the west except for cuts and closures. The last time they were in office, where was the health investment for the west? Nowhere. What was the biggest health infrastructure project on the go during the Baillieu-Napthine years? It was the Bendigo Hospital that the Labor government started before they even got into office. The Leader of the Opposition stood on the side of the new Melton hospital last week crying that they would have built it within 12 months. That is funny, because they had jack all to say about it for the first 1153 days of this term, until they found out we already owned the land.

Victorians know that they should be worried when the former Minister for Planning announces that he is going to fast-track something. They know about his bungling of the zoning of Fishermans Bend. To jog their memories, when those opposite say they are suddenly going to do something related to infrastructure it means that their mates are up for a big payday and the taxpayers are going to be left wanting. Here we have these Johnny-come-latelys, the failed former planning minister standing in a field with the failure of a Shadow Minister for Health that has spent more time with QAnon than nurses and health workers alongside the Liberal candidate for Melton, a failed former backbencher who for the first few weeks of his candidacy still had ‘Just another Burwood local’ on his social media site. Are we to believe they are going to stand up for Melton and the west? The only Liberal member for Western Metro has a plan for health. We know what that is thanks to his social media. The Liberals’ health plan, if Mr Finn in the other place has his way, will look like The Handmaid’s Tale’s Gilead. The people of Melton and the west see through all of the malarkey. They see right through it.

It is this Andrews Labor government that has stood up and committed to the people of Melton and the people of the western suburbs. We made promises and have delivered them every step of the way, not like those opposite suddenly feigning interest at the last minute when they know it is already going to happen. It was my commitment to the people of Melton 3½ years ago as a former paramedic that I would deliver the hospital in Melton, and that is exactly what we are going to get on and do, and it is now fully funded. The fallacy that gets touted by some that we have not delivered for Melton is ridiculous—absolutely ridiculous. As I said, I have been the member for Melton for 3½ years, and we have seen more than $1.5 billion invested in the Melton electorate during that time. In this budget we are seeing not just a new hospital but land for a new secondary school, a rebuild of Staughton College in Melton, new primary schools and huge investment right across the electorate of Melton right into Bacchus Marsh, such as the $30 million aquatic centre that we have contributed $10 million to.

This new hospital is going to be a fantastic asset and investment for our community. Whilst those opposite are talking about fantasy, let us read what this 2022–23 budget actually is delivering. If we go to chapter 1, page 5 of the ‘State Capital Program’ budget paper, it reads:

A new hospital will be built in Cobblebank to deliver high-quality care for the people in the western region of Melbourne. It will deliver 24-hour emergency services with over 100 medical and surgical beds, an intensive care unit, maternity and neonatal services, mental health services, ambulatory care and a range of clinical supports. The Melton Hospital will also use new models of care, building upon virtual healthcare and increasing capacity for hospital in the home programs.

The new hospital will be designed as an all-electric hospital to remove the need for gas. The all-electric hospital supports the Government’s climate policy and renewable energy targets.

This investment will activate the Cobblebank precinct and stimulate further investment and development in the area to drive employment growth and nearby residential developments to improve housing supply.

This initiative includes funding of $70 million provided in previous budgets to plan, acquire land and deliver early works for a total investment of between $0.9–$1.0 billion.

That is right: $900 million and $1 billion. This is what delivering actually looks like—not spouting mistruths in an electorate that they would have to search for on Google Maps, but getting on and delivering in the budget the vital infrastructure Victoria and the west needs. This new hospital will accommodate almost 130 000 patient presentations each year, with almost 60 000 patients to be seen in the emergency department. This is going to be a full-size tertiary hospital that will treat tens of thousands of people out in the western corridor and in particular in Melton and the surrounding district. This will create more than 700 direct jobs and 1700 indirect jobs during construction, and it will also provide a new education and training hub for doctors and nurses in Melbourne’s west.

We have invested money into planning—that was probably a foreign concept for the former planning minister when he finally came out to Melton. We are not throwing a project to our mates and letting them run riot with the state’s credit card, like he did it at Fishermans Bend. We are planning and delivering a modern hospital—the first clean electric hospital, and how amazing will that be, delivering a healthier climate with our health infrastructure and making use of modern technology and emerging practices. It is this Andrews Labor government that is leading the world in medical research, and we have the ability to harness that potential in delivering new and better health outcomes for Victorians. This is not about slapping up some concrete walls and saying, ‘There you go. There, it’s built’, and then walking away. This is about using the resources and the technology available to us, capitalising on Victoria’s brilliant healthcare workers and creating a network in the west so that the upgrades at the Bacchus Marsh hospital, the investments at the Sunshine Hospital and of course the fantastic new Footscray hospital, when completed, will link up and deliver for Victorians living in the west the amazing health care that they deserve.

On my way into this building every sitting week I do drive down Ballarat Road in the western suburbs. It is my old stomping ground. I grew up in the west, I went to school in the west, I played footy in the west and I spent my working life as a paramedic in the west. I am a westie, and I am proud every time I drive past the site of the new Footscray hospital to see that what once was a car park not long ago now is a skyline of cranes delivering new and better health care for the west. It is exciting. That is what this Andrews Labor government does, and that is the commitment that we have made to the new Melton hospital: between $900 million and $1 billion to deliver fantastic health care out in the west. It will be great for my electorate of Melton, for the western suburbs people and also for all Victorians.

Mr D O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (16:32): I am pleased to say a few words on this matter of public importance proposed by the member for Gembrook. I would like to remind the member for Melton that this MPI is actually about Victorians trusting not what the Victorian government says but what it actually does, and we have just heard a lot of discussion in the last 15 minutes about what they are going to do at Melton. The reality is in 2018 a hospital was promised, and there is still a paddock out there.

I wonder whether this is maybe a new version of the Victorian Future Fund. Maybe they have got some cattle on agistment out at this hospital site and they are raising a few more dollars for the fund. The member for Melton says he is delivering, but when you go to the budget papers, the budget handed down by the Treasurer just last week, you can go to page 66 of budget paper 3, member for Melton, and you can find exactly how you are delivering on the new Melton hospital. In 2021–22, TBC; in 2022–23, TBC; in 2023–24, TBC; in 2024–25, TBC; and in 2025–26, TBC—all to be confirmed. There is not anything in this budget that says that this government is actually going to get on with it at any stage. It is all TBC. I see the member for South Barwon is in the chamber as well—

A member: Cattle prices are up.

Mr D O’BRIEN: Cattle prices are up. Well, maybe they are getting a bit more on agistment on these blank canvases that they have got. But the Barwon women’s and children’s hospital, another so-called $500 million project—once again, TBC, TBC, TBC: every year to be confirmed. It is this spin that we get from this government, time and time again from the budget. We heard it once again in question time today, ‘A record $12 billion spend on health’. Well, take out $1.5 billion for those two projects for a start, because they are TBC. They are actually not in the budget papers as funded items.

You can go further than that and look at the output initiatives in the budget papers for the health department. There is $3.5 billion of the output initiatives in the budget papers that shows that it is money that is being spent this year, as in 2021–22. There is a month to go. All that money is already spent. So $5 billion of the so-called $12 billion record spend is either not in the budget papers or has already been spent. And I might add that, of that $3.5 billion, half comes from the commonwealth, because it is under the COVID spending. So it is $1 billion for rapid antigen tests and a little bit over $1 billion for PPE and other measures, and half of it funded by the commonwealth.

But I want to turn to the one that really gets me going when it comes to spin and believing not what the government says but what it does. We all remember the famous press release of Wednesday, 1 April 2020. And yes, it was April Fools’ Day, but this was not apparently a joke—although perhaps it was, because the government promised back then, at the start of the pandemic: ‘We are going to deliver $1.3 billion for 4000 ICU beds’.

Mr McCurdy: Where are they?

Mr D O’BRIEN: Exactly, member for Ovens Valley. Where are they? The government said in this press release from 1 April 2020:

Victoria’s health system will receive a massive $1.3 billion injection to quickly establish an extra 4,000 ICU beds as we respond to the coronavirus pandemic and protect Victorian lives.

So this was all about getting us ready. Indeed the quote from the Premier in there talks about flattening the curve. It goes on:

We are preparing for the worst …

Now, the reality is the government did not prepare our health system. Yes, we have got a one-in-100-year pandemic, but this government said on 1 April 2020, ‘We’re going to prepare the system. We’re going to provide 4000 ICU beds’—and they never appeared. I have been on the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee (PAEC), where we have been asking, ‘Where are they?’. We get all sorts of spin from the department and from the minister: ‘There’s this many ready over here’ and ‘We’ve got this many spaces over there’ and ‘We can ramp up if needed’. Clearly, thankfully, we do not currently need 4000 ICU beds, but the second paragraph of the press release from the Premier and the then Minister for Health, Jenny Mikakos—does anyone remember her? Anyone heard from her? She got thrown under a bus, didn’t she?—says:

… which will secure the ICU equipment, staff and space we need …

If we had the staff for those 4000 ICU beds, we would not have our system in crisis like we do now. The government promised it was going to prepare the system, and now it is saying, ‘We couldn’t possibly have prepared for a one-in-100-year pandemic’. Well, Premier, you cannot have it both ways. Two and a half years ago you said you were going to do it. The government has abjectly failed on this.

Changing tack just for a moment and picking up the comments from the member for Melton about commitments at the 2018 election, it goes to the same theme here about trusting not what the government says but actually what it does. Literally the day before we went into caretaker mode at the 2018 election the Premier went to the Latrobe Valley and promised 500 jobs through an SEA Electric vehicle plant in the Latrobe Valley. In the following year’s budget papers, in 2019–20, under ‘Regional Development’ in budget paper 3, page 243, the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions literally put those 500 jobs in its expected outcomes for 2018–19. It literally says here:

The 2018–19 expected outcome is higher than the … target due to a number of projects with large employment outcomes such as the SEA Electric Vehicle Project …

What happened with that? We never saw the 500 jobs. You know what we found? We found that the taxpayer was funding four or five people from the Latrobe Valley to go to the Dandenong plant and work for SEA Electric. But did the 500 jobs ever come about? No. It took questioning at PAEC in November last year to actually finally get the government to admit that not only did the Premier’s commitment go out the door but the budget papers are wrong too, because the government never delivered this. It is this sort of spin that we get from this government time and time again, particularly just before an election: ‘We’re gonna do this for you, we’re gonna do that for you’.

On health in particular this government continues to fail. You can also go to the budget papers—again, the spin of the $12 billion investment. Have a look at budget paper 3. I know government members probably do not actually look at the budget papers, but have a look at budget paper 3, page 220, the ‘Output summary by departmental objectives’ for the health department—the totals at the very bottom: the 2021–22 revised total, $27 billion; the 2022–23 budget, $25 billion. So last year, the year we are currently in, $27 billion; next year’s budget, $25 billion. That is a $2 billion cut to what the government has actually been spending versus what it is going to spend this year, and yet we get this spin from the government, this spin of ‘We’re spending more, we’re fixing the health system, record spending’. It is not even more than last year. It is $2 billion less than last year.

Now, you can have a look at it—I can see some furrowed brows and shaking heads on the other side—page 220 of budget paper 3. That is right; that is not what the ministerial talking points said. They said, ‘We’re spending $12 billion’, when we know $5 billion of that either is not in the budget papers or has already been spent this year. And the overall figure is $27 billion in the current year, down to $25 billion next year. So the spin from this government is extraordinary.

We are seeing this manifested. We are seeing it in dental cuts; we are seeing it in cuts to small rural hospitals; we are seeing it in the failures on the elective surgery waiting lists, which have blown out. And the government says on that—there is another one—on elective surgery waiting lists, ‘Pandemic. Pandemic—we had no choice, we had to save lives’. Well, the elective surgery waiting list in December 2014 was at 40 869; in March 2020, 51 330. So they had already gone up by—what is that? That is by nearly, well, 11 000 people on elective surgery waiting lists before the pandemic hit. This is the point that the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow minister in the other place have been making time and time again: this government’s spin is that it is because of the pandemic that we are suffering this health crisis at the moment, but the reality is this government had failed time and time again before the pandemic came along.

We have seen those failures. We saw them through the failure of the ambulance response times in the previous years, which the Premier actually got wrong here in the Parliament—and he refuses to correct the record. We have seen them in the blowout in elective surgery waiting lists, and we continue to see them in the spin from this government, with the TBCs throughout the budget papers on hospitals like Melton and Barwon. Sadly it is Victorians who are paying for it through the failures of the ambulance and health systems at the moment under this Andrews Labor government.

Ms WARD (Eltham) (16:42): Today’s matter of public importance is interesting:

… Victorians should not trust what the Andrews Labor government says and instead should look at its actions …

Well, thank you. Thank you for giving us an opportunity to talk about our actions—to talk about everything we have delivered. I do not think that there could be an MPI that is more of a Dorothy Dixer than this one, I really do not. To be able to talk about the countless health measures and infrastructure projects that we have delivered since 2014 is an absolute gift from those opposite, and I thank them for it.

So let us talk about actions. Since 2014 we have invested $10 billion in health and ambulance infrastructure projects—and Speaker, that includes a project on your patch. That includes the ambulance station that you have got at Watsonia, which is absolutely fabulous, on Grimshaw Street. I know that you are very pleased with it, and I know that you can see the change from what they had to what they have now got. The fit-for-purpose space that they have got that respects the professionalism of their job and shows how much it is valued is terrific. I drive past it regularly on the way to my father-in-law’s, and I go, ‘Right, there’s another one that we have delivered’.

We will talk about the one at Montmorency, which was the first one that was delivered in our patch. We originally had an ambulance station at Montmorency that had been built in the 1960s in part through the donation of the local Apex club. I see the member for Yuroke nodding her head, and I would not be surprised if her dad had been a part of that process. This was a small facility that was falling apart. It was a facility where you could barely get a proper shower. It was something that was a difficult space for mixed genders to be discreet in and have showers and get changed in. There was not a space where people could actually do work—where they could be retrained, where they could go through their reports. We saw paramedics sitting on chairs with trays on their laps trying to do work, because they did not have enough space.

It was a similar situation in Diamond Creek, where again it had not really been built fit for purpose, where they were right at the back of the facility and had to walk a fair distance to get to their ambulances and where there was not enough space for them to actually do the work that they needed to do when they were not out serving and saving lives. We have delivered the new ambulance station at Montmorency, the new ambulance station at Diamond Creek and the new ambulance station at Watsonia, which is not to say what we have done around the whole state, right? That is just one.

So let us talk about actions. I also forgot to mention that we delivered the first 24-hour ambulance service in Nillumbik. It did not exist before. It now exists thanks to this government. So, yes, absolutely, let us talk about actions. Let us talk about when the opposition was in power and we had a health crisis, not because of a one-in-100-year pandemic but because of destructive budget cuts and a destructive culture which did not respect our health workers and workforce. Let us talk about their disregard for the public services. Let us talk about actions. Let us talk about paramedics who were so driven by despair that they wrote on their ambulances how bad the system was, because they could not get heard. Let us talk about paramedics who volunteered their time to hand out cards urging people to put the Liberals last because of how much they had decimated the system, because of how badly paramedics felt. Let us talk about actions, absolutely.

Let us talk about the actions of the Baillieu government where recurrent spending decreased in 2011–12 and 2012–13 relative to the previous year by a combined $26 million. Let us talk about actions. Let us talk about capital expenditure by that government that also fell, by $137 million in 2012–13, producing a decrease of $155 million in total health spending for that year. Let us talk about actions. Let us talk about the community campaign in which I participated to keep the Austin in public hands, because our mate Jeff Kennett wanted to flog it off, right? They wanted to flog it off. Our community in the north-east was outraged by that, which is why they welcomed the announcement of our community hospitals. When it comes to health care the actions of those opposite speak very loudly. They do not invest in health, and they do not invest in care.

Let us talk about the Eltham district community hospital. It is a fantastic project. I see the member for Cranbourne nodding her head, and I know she is thrilled with hers. And I know—

Ms Richards: It has started.

Ms WARD: that it has started, and they will start. They were committed to be completed by 2024. They will be completed by 2024 as promised.

Ms Richards interjected.

Ms WARD: And your community is excited. My community is excited, and I know the member for Melton’s community is excited. They are absolutely excited. I know that my community—in fact the whole state—knows that this is a government that gets things done. When it comes to actions this is the government that you want because it gets things done. I am disappointed that Nillumbik walked away from their original offer to use the Greensborough site that we had—we did have a block of land; Nillumbik did not want to sell it. I know that there will be an announcement very soon which will also be very well received by my community.

Let us talk about actions. Let us talk about the $2.9 billion to build, expand and modernise hospitals and health services right across the state. It is in the budget. It is real money. Again, these are actions that will be delivered. Let us talk about actions. Let us talk about the federal budget, which was an opportunity for the commonwealth to step in and fix the ongoing issues that have plagued not just Victoria but every single state and territory as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Where is the federal government when it comes to care and health care? Nowhere to be seen. Their actions again speak. It is their actions that are absolutely relevant because their actions show exactly what they value, and they do not value people—they just value money in pockets. Instead the federal government did what Liberal governments do best—they delivered a $1.5 billion cut in health funding for Victoria alone. Right across the country every single health system is under pressure.

A member interjected.

Ms WARD: Those opposite are giggling. They giggle over federal budget cuts into health care. Shame on them that they are not banging on the doors in Canberra saying, ‘Give our state the money that it deserves, give our state the money that it needs, give us the money that we deserve’. We are 25 per cent of Australia’s population, yet we get crumbs when it comes to support from the federal government. The Liberal-National government in Canberra does not care about Victorians, and those opposite are never there sticking up for this state. They fall into line with their colleagues because they have got the same value system—do not invest in people, do not invest in health care, do not invest in care. These are the actions that matter. These are the actions that show who you are and what you value. This is why this MPI is such a gift, because again it gives us an opportunity to talk about all of our actions—all of the things that we are doing—and the actions of those opposite, which are to do nothing, or if they do something, it is to damage, it is to cut.

Very recently Queensland had to make the difficult decision to suspend elective surgery as a result of furloughed health workers reaching more than 3000, and we have heard stories of ambulance ramping in every single state and territory in this country. The pandemic has hit and it has hit us hard, and our health services deserve to be respected. They deserve to be supported. Those opposite just want to talk about what a crap job they are doing. They do not want to support them, they do not want to put money in. They do not want to help; they want to undermine the health message.

Let us talk about actions. Let us talk about the upper house member who has throughout the last two years undermined the health measures needed to manage this once-in-100-year pandemic, who has regularly posted fake news—the upper house member who wants to pray abortion away. Let us talk about actions. Let us talk about the upper house member who in May 2020 posted a photo of the Premier photoshopped onto Kim Jong-un; who in November 2020 posted a photo of the Premier photoshopped onto Mao Zedong; who in November 2020 posted a photo of what he called ‘MAGA rallies today’ when they were from unrelated rallies in 2016; who in November 2020 mocked people with a disability on Twitter by photoshopping a photo of the Premier; who in October 2021 posted a photo of the Premier as Hitler; who constantly refers to COVID-19 as ‘the Wuhan virus’ on social media; who invited a known Neo-Nazi to speak at his March for the Babies rally; who claimed the stay-at-home order in February 2021 was not about the virus at an anti-lockdown protest online; and who attended a protest with a couple of thousand of his closest friends in November 2021, where a full-size gallows was brought to Parliament. Absolutely let us talk about actions, and I notice that those opposite have suddenly become silent. Could this be an action of theirs where they actually can show shame at the terrible behaviour of their colleague? Can they be ashamed of their colleague and the terrible behaviour he has shown?

Mr R SMITH (Warrandyte) (16:52): I rise to speak on this matter of public importance, moved by the member for Gembrook, which basically expresses concerns about the health crisis we are experiencing under this government. It makes me, frankly, sick to my stomach to hear a member of the government say that the MPI is a great opportunity to talk about all the things that they are doing as a government. This is not about the government, this is about people. It is not about an opportunity for you to talk about everything the government has done; it is an opportunity to consider the words of a Melbourne mother who went to one of our major city hospitals and, on her observation, said:

It seems wrong and risky Victoria’s healthcare professionals are being put in this position every day and are clearly being overworked in a life-or-death environment …

The focus should be on an assessment by doctors who fear Victorian hospitals face a mass departure of burnt-out healthcare workers just when they are needed the most. Instead of taking political pot shots and making lame jokes, like the member for Melton did, maybe he should focus on the words of Dr Mya Cubitt from the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine, who said:

If we go into the winter, without people being honest about the state of our emergency department we will continue to see an exodus of staff and more and more emergency departments will start to fall over …

The focus should be, further, on her words that say:

Now, we’re not giving timely and quality of care to injuries that are occurring in our community and it is another level of escalation and it should worry us all …

Maybe instead of self-congratulation the government should be focusing on the Royal Melbourne Hospital’s head of emergency, who said that 5 minutes is the longest emergency patients brought in by an ambulance should wait before being transferred to a cubicle, while going on to comment that the wait now can be up to 3 hours. Maybe the government should focus on the ambulance ramping, which is a sign of an emergency ward that is in trouble—39 ambulances ramped last night. The minister could not tell us if there were any more and could not confirm that figure. Maybe instead of self-congratulation the government should be focusing on the fact that the demand on emergency departments in Victorian hospitals has reached a level that doctors and nurses say is the worst they have seen in years, with the negative health impacts of the two years where patients had elective surgeries postponed and routine heart and cancer checks delayed. But more importantly, instead of the self-congratulation, maybe they should be focusing on Nick Panagiotopoulos, who died waiting for a call to 000 to be answered. Maybe they should focus on Alisha Hussein, a 14-year-old girl who died having an asthma attack with 000 calls that did not connect for more than 15 minutes, or the 23-month-old little girl who died in a drowning after her parents made multiple calls to 000, or the 43-year-old man who collapsed and made two calls to 000 that lasted about 4 minutes but did not connect. The man died at the scene.

Maybe instead of smart alec comments about what the Leader of the Opposition did the government should be focusing on the 49-year-old man who got a limb injury from a chainsaw. It took 5 minutes and 36 seconds to connect. The man was conscious when paramedics arrived but went into cardiac arrest and then died. There is the two-year-old boy who was found facedown in a public pool. It took 5 minutes and 44 seconds for 000 to connect. Or there is the 51-year-old man who had a cardiac arrest at home. It took 5 minutes, 22 seconds for the 000 call to be answered. There is the 39-year-old man who died and had suffered shortness of breath. It took 6 minutes, 14 seconds for the call to reach an operator, followed by an ambulance dispatch delay of 14 minutes. Or there is the 21-year-old man who went into cardiac arrest at a public car wash. He waited for the call to connect and died at the scene after 47 minutes of resuscitative efforts. There is the 61-year-old man who collapsed. His housemates heard him. It took almost 9 minutes for 000 to get through. He died at the scene, following more than 30 minutes of resuscitation attempts. There is the 51-year-old man who went into cardiac arrest after choking in a food court. It took too long, over 4 minutes, for an ESTA operator to be reached, and he was pronounced dead. Or there is the nine-month-old baby. While we are having political pot shots, maybe we should be focusing on this young child. There was a call answer delay of over 4 minutes. We raised another issue today of young Lydia, 14 years old: 36 minutes waiting for an ambulance.

They are the things that we are focusing on here today. We have brought issue after issue to this chamber. We have been shown an extraordinary, gobsmacking lack of empathy from both the Premier and the Minister for Health, both of whom claim that the pandemic was the cause—and I will come back to that in a second—but seem to misunderstand that the people that I have mentioned are not going to be helped by the investment that I have no faith will be delivered. The proof is there to see. The promises made in the past have just come to nothing, and people have been betrayed. Not one dollar that the government claim they are going to spend is going to help the people that I have mentioned. The government wants to say it is all COVID, that wicked global pandemic. Well, let me quote extensively from an article from 25 November 2019 by Grant McArthur in the Herald Sun. In this article he says:

More than 20,000 sick Victorians will have their operations further delayed as the state’s hospitals are forced to extend waiting lists in the face of massive budget cuts.

The waiting lists at Melbourne’s major hospitals alone will grow 43 per cent as a result of surgery funding deals signed off by the Andrews Government this week—

all prepandemic—

…

Under the deals, Melbourne’s biggest hospitals will be among those placed under the greatest pressure, including the Northern Hospital which faces a 98 per cent jump to its elective surgery waiting list.

The article goes on to say the AMA back in 2019 said:

… the state was now in a ‘perfect storm’ of inadequate hospital funding and waiting list blowouts, and hospitals could no longer meet community expectations. ‘It is a truly appalling state of affairs for the sick and vulnerable of Victoria,’ he said.

The report goes on to say:

… the Andrews Government has funded health services to perform 5.28 per cent fewer elective operations, leading to the blowouts.

The AMA went on to say:

Morale is low among public hospital doctors and nurses constantly being asked to do more with less, while being denied some basic entitlements.

The article says:

As revealed by the Herald Sun in July, hospitals were forced to look at cutting services and increasing waiting lists when given draft budgets containing shortfalls of between $20 million and $35 million.

… at least 18 hospitals want financial bailout assurances from the Department of Health so they can still operate next year while in debt.

Members of the government are getting up and telling us every day what a great job they are doing in health, but this article exposes facts that were there long before COVID hit. The system was underfunded, and when COVID hit we had reports of health officials from other states who came to give us desperately needed help commenting that it was clearly the worst resourced health department in the country. I read an article also from the Age in about mid-2020 which said that even if health staff were doubled it would still be less than New South Wales.

It is an appalling state of affairs. It is disingenuous, to say the least, for the government to claim that COVID has caused these problems when we have clear examples of underfunding. And I say again that the government are getting up to congratulate themselves and to spruik what a wonderful budget they have. They do not have a word to say about Nick Panagiotopoulos, about Alisha Hussein or about Lydia, who we mentioned today, and in fact I might say they do not even mention any one of the number of cases that we have brought to this chamber or the 89 000 people who are on hospital waiting lists. That is about 1000 people in every single member’s electorate who are waiting in pain—long delays—and who, when they listen to the Treasurer or the Minister for Health or the Premier talk about the wonderful budget, know for a fact that they have been waiting one, two or three years in excruciating pain with no end in sight. They deserve much, much better. I am sick and tired, as are Victorians, of this government throwing money at a problem that they themselves created.

In 2019 these hospitals were underfunded—headline: ‘waitlist agony’—with waitlists blowing out. The government underfunded them, underfunded health, and now claim under the cover of COVID that none of it was their fault, that they are the most generous government in the world. Well, the facts speak very differently. You might want to live in an Orwellian society, where you airbrush the facts out, but let me remind you that Nineteen Eighty-Four is a cautionary tale, not a handbook on how to run government. These are the facts. The government has underfunded, under-resourced, health, and I would say to those opposite: anyone who is getting up next on this MPI, think about the people who have died as a result, think about the people who are living in agony every single day—think about the people, less about yourselves. Start thinking about Victorians.

Mr J BULL (Sunbury) (17:01): I am pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to debate on this matter of public importance submitted by the member for Gembrook. I do want to take the opportunity to go back in time somewhat—back to none other than Bob Hawke and the federal election policy speech of 1990. This was a significant speech and an important moment for the nation. On that night Bob said:

I will tell you our policy—

on health—

in two words: Medicare stays.

That was 32 years ago, and in the context of this MPI this policy election speech is incredibly important, because what we know and what we understand of the time is that Medicare was, as Medicare has been since then, constantly under attack by conservative forces in this country and in this state. We know that Labor created Medicare, Labor funded Medicare and indeed Labor implemented Medicare. We know that it is Labor governments that always defend healthcare policies within our state and within our nation and will continue to do so each and every time we have got the opportunity to sit on the government benches.

So when an MPI like this one is brought to the house you have to wonder why it is that those opposite want to bring healthcare policies that this government has a strong record of continued investment in. I want to take the opportunity to reference some of those investments, as other members have done. It is the Andrews Labor government that is delivering 10 community hospitals across the state. It is the Andrews Labor government that is delivering the fantastic and much-needed Melton hospital, and I acknowledge the member for Melton and his contribution and his commitment to that important project. It is the Andrews Labor government that is continuing to deliver the Maryborough hospital, and it is this government that will continue to build upon our record of supporting our ambos, our nurses, our doctors—all of those people who have had an incredibly tough and incredibly challenging 2½ years.

The list of significant investments, initiatives and policies that this government has undertaken within the health portfolio is extensive. I am conscious of the 7 minutes that are remaining for this speech, but I do want to rattle off a few. Since 2017 we know that the Andrews Labor government has completed more than 70 health infrastructure projects: ambulance station rebuilds or upgrades at Bacchus Marsh, Mernda, Diamond Creek, Broadford, Eltham and Orbost; the construction underway at Clyde North, Moe, Warragul, Mornington and Lilydale; of course $1.5 billion to deliver the Footscray Hospital; $541 million for the Ballarat Base Hospital redevelopment; the Victorian Heart Hospital; and the investments within the Sunshine Hospital, which are particularly important for my local community. In 2019 we had the opening of the Joan Kirner Women’s and Children’s Hospital to meet the demand for a world-class maternity and paediatric service. The list goes on.

If we take last week’s budget, there is a $12 billion investment, a massive investment, in health within this state. As we know, there is $900 million, as was mentioned by the member for Melton, for the Melton hospital; $500 million for the Barwon women’s and children’s hospital; $236 million for new emergency departments at Casey and at Werribee Mercy; $36 million for an alcohol and other drug residential rehabilitation facility in Mildura; $25 million for an early parenting centre in Shepparton—investment in the regions, which I know of course, Deputy Speaker, would be something of importance to you. The list goes on. It will be this government, the Andrews Labor government—and Labor governments do this across the country—that continues to invest in health services within this state.

This MPI specifically references our community hospitals. One of the things that we know is that local health care is critically important not just for those local communities but also to taking pressure off emergency departments at our major hospitals across the state. We know that at a time when Victorians were in greatest need our healthcare team delivered more than 15 million doses of the vaccine in this state, administered more than 20 million PCR tests and treated thousands of patients. This government, the Andrews Labor government, acknowledges that and thanks them for that work.

Within the $12 million commitment there is training and the hiring of 7000 new healthcare workers, including 5000 nurses, as other members have mentioned. We will make sure that we continue to invest in our ambulance services and in the commitments that have been made to ESTA to ensure that our call centre is supported at the time of greatest need.

But I do want to go back to the community hospitals, because this MPI references the community hospitals. This was an election commitment of $675 million for 10 across the state. We know that they are critically important to taking the pressure, as I mentioned earlier, off our critical and major hospitals across the state, but what we need to ensure is that we continue to invest in those hospitals, and it is this government that will continue to invest in our local healthcare services.

Those opposite may want to play politics with this issue, but I know as a local member how passionate, how excited and how committed my community is to see the Sunbury Day Hospital become the Sunbury community hospital. I want to take the opportunity to acknowledge the commitment and the contribution of the CCC, the community consultative committee, which was established to work with me as the local member. I was very fortunate to be chair of that committee and to be able to deliver a community hospital for Sunbury that is the first of its kind. It is this side, not the other side, that at the last election made that commitment. So those opposite can come in and play politics all they like, but it is this government that will this year start construction on the project. It is this government that has worked with the community to make sure that that project will be delivered, and it will be this government that opens this fundamental and critically important project for my community. I do again want to take the opportunity to thank everybody that has been involved in that project.

This government will continue to invest and ensure that we are working with the department, that we are working with the local communities and that we are working with all of those that play a critical and central role within our healthcare system. There is no doubt that there has been extraordinary pressure placed on all of those within the healthcare setting, and that is why last week’s budget is so critical and that is why last week’s budget is so important.

The facts are these: Labor built Medicare; Labor builds hospitals and health services and supports Victorians to have access to high-quality health care. And we will continue to do that both through our commitments within the budget as outlined by the Treasurer last week and through our commitments through the Minister for Health and through the Premier to ensure that we are working with local communities and people within those communities. Whether people live in the country, in the regions, in the suburbs or in the cities, we will make sure that we continue to get on and work with all of those within the various agencies—our nurses, our ambulance officers, our doctors, all of those people that work within health—and make sure that we continue to invest.

We will continue—as we have done while we have had the opportunity, since November 2014, to be in office—to invest in and support local communities, understanding that when Medicare was created it provided an opportunity for all Australians to have access to high-quality, affordable and decent health care. No matter how much money you earned, no matter your background, no matter where you came from, Medicare was a significant and important reform for this country. Labor understands that because it was Labor that created Medicare.

All of those announcements that are contained within the MPI, the matters that have been raised by the member for Gembrook, are announcements that we in this government will continue to ensure that we deliver, and we will make sure that we honour those commitments that we made to local communities. I know as a local member how fantastic the Sunbury Day Hospital will be when it becomes the Sunbury community hospital. Making sure that there is an opportunity for local residents to get that access to care when they need it, particularly for urgent care, particularly for cuts and breaks and significant abrasions—making sure that we are there to provide an opportunity for the community—is something that Labor believes in, and we will continue to invest in health services right across the state.

Ms BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (17:12): We are in a health crisis. There is no doubt about that. People are dying. They cannot get emergency surgery; they cannot get an ambulance—this is something I have not seen in my 30 years of experience as a nurse in the health system. How could we be here now, after two years of government telling us they were preparing the health system? I am horrified to hear, after being told to stay home so we could have the health system prepared over and over by the Premier, that there are less people taking 000 calls for the ambulance today than there were two years ago. How is that preparing the health system? I cannot accept that the Andrews Labor government promised 4000 ICU beds and now they are not delivered. They have even tried to deny that they made that promise. But the worst part is that this is not pandemic caused—and that is in the words of Dr Sarah Whitelaw, a senior emergency physician at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, who said that the system was under enormous pressure before COVID. This was predicted 10 to 15 years ago, that the system would be at capacity. COVID has just pushed the system over the edge.

The government’s own Productivity Commission report tells us that the state of Victoria has less investment per capita than any other state in our nation. Victoria is poorly funded in health by this Andrews Labor government—funded worse than any other state in this nation. That is the Productivity Commission’s report. That is not me saying that; that is the government’s own Productivity Commission’s report.

Labor governments have been in power for 18 of the last 23 years—almost two decades, and what have they done to the health system? Yet we have been hearing for years before COVID that 500 000 people were coming into the state each year. They needed to plan. They needed to plan to have the adequate health services, and they were warned. The ambulance system is in crisis. Every day in my office people are telling me terrible stories about not being able to get ambulances, not being able to get services. And it is not due to the people in accident and emergency (A and E), who are doing their damnedest, who are having to make really tough decisions about priorities because they have to prioritise the sickest person. Then we are seeing things like the child in my electorate who had a burst appendix and could not even get into the Royal Children’s Hospital but had 26 people in front of her trying to get a bed—a five-year-old with the likelihood of peritonitis and death imminent. There are horrible stories like that.

On Friday last week a senior emergency physician, Dr Stephen Parnis, told 3AW that Victorian emergency departments are dangerous places to be, labelling the current conditions as ‘utterly unacceptable’. He said that without doubt we are losing lives that we could have saved and should have saved. Can you imagine working in ED at the moment as a nurse? Can you imagine the pressure? They are extraordinary, and no-one is saying it is the fault of the staff—the nurses, doctors, the speech therapists, the orderlies and all the people who are doing their damnedest, doing double shifts, going in on call, putting their families second. That is not what we are saying here. We are saying the government knew this and did not prepare and did not plan. Even with the pandemic they did not add extra services.

All this spin that has gone on. They called for people to come and volunteer. 16 000 people with expertise in health put their names down to come in, but they were not called. There were not those people doing the swabs when the nurses were exhausted; they were not there. They are not now on the triage for the ESTA calls. There are so many things this government could do, but all they do is talk and talk and not really act. The scratching of the surface is so easy to unveil—the mistruths, the appalling state we find ourselves in, a code orange again just yesterday.

Ten hospitals promised at the last election have not been delivered—they were promised in 2018, and four years later there is nothing. In Warrnambool the accident and emergency is overflowing, and that is not because of the staff not doing their damnedest. They were saying this before I was elected—in 2015 they were begging for a new hospital, which we committed to. The government finally came, kicking and screaming, in 2020. So far past the use-by date is the A and E that patients are being treated in the corridors. They are trying to rejig something as we speak—it was in the paper last week—so they can service the community in A and E because it has been bursting at the seams for so long.

Maybe they are worried about the hospital not being delivered on time. The annual report of the Warrnambool Base Hospital says it will be delivered later than expected, so 2027, but the minister last week said, ‘That’s not correct, it will be delivered in 2026’. We need clarity on that. And why the discrepancy? I am very concerned that they will push us back. Those three theatres are the same theatres that I worked in in the 1980s.

If you have a complex hip in one and a shoulder in another and you have got an emergency—let me tell you, in an emergency situation you cannot close up quick enough to put an emergency C-section on the table and get a baby delivered quickly, and we will see tragedies. I have not wanted to say that in this place. I have not wanted to say it because I do not want people worried, but now it has got to really concerning. It is concerning when we have 10 hospitals that were promised in 2018 not delivered and a hospital in our region that needs to be delivered as a priority.

We have already got babies being delivered on the side of the road. We have got a government not doing their job in planning. We warned this government in a recommendation of the perinatal inquiry. In 2018 a recommendation came down to do some workforce planning. Today in question time the minister quoted that back, ‘We need to do some workforce planning’. No kidding. That is what the report said in 2018, and guess what? Not one action—nothing, none of those recommendations were acted on. We said we would be needing midwives in the region. That is why Portland is closed, because they cannot get midwives. And they had not even bothered advertising until I pushed that in the press and shamed them into starting to advertise. The minister just ignores the regions. Only this morning I got this text from someone inside the hospital at Portland:

No anaesthetist at all this week. All surgery cancelled this week. No resuscitation or airway management so little hope for potential cardiac or respiratory arrests.

Next week our only anaesthetist should be back from sick leave but all major surgery is cancelled indefinitely: e.g. orthopaedic surgeons can do minor items like carpal tunnel—

they are under locals these days—

but no hips or knees … This has come about because we now lack a surgical registrar to care for inpatients.

There is no news on the new 3rd anaesthetist or 2nd general surgeon whilst we wait for DOH to offer applicants a reasonable contract.

I will add my bit in here because they keep telling you this. The contracts they are offering are so unattractive no-one is taking them up. I will go back to the quote, and it is a quote from someone who I will not say who it is, because they cannot speak out. Lastly, they say:

It is all such a travesty esp when Wbool cannot cope with their own workload.

When I put that to the minister in question time today, what was his answer?

In regard to the assertion that services are not available in our regional communities, that is simply not correct.

Well, you tell me how come we have had the ophthalmology service cut. We have got anaesthetic training cut. We have got maternity services shut. If that is not services being cut before our very eyes, I do not know what is. But, again, I am not talking about the good, hardworking people within the health system doing their damnedest in Portland, Heywood, Port Fairy and Warrnambool—really hardworking—I am generally concerned about their burnout levels. This is just such a difficult situation.

I had a phone call this morning from Bernie Wilder. He is a man who they believed was having a stroke. Because he could not see a doctor in Portland, the ambulance took him to Hamilton. His stroke turned out to be Bell’s palsy; it is a dropping of the face, so it looks like a stroke. Once it was determined it was not a stroke, he was asked to go. The staff are under so much pressure—and I can picture this: they would have been off to a cardiac arrest or off to someone haemorrhaging. This guy had travelled over 100 kilometres in an ambulance that would not normally go off to Hamilton, because it could have been dealt with in Portland. And there he was on the street—$250 to get a taxi back, no system in place for that poor guy to get home, sitting there unwell and trying to work out how to get back to Portland. There is no public transport. The system has collapsed. We have got nothing in place because this government has not done the planning.

How did we get in this position? It is so easy to blame COVID, but you can tell by what I have said that that is not the reason. It has been at breaking point for years, and this government has not invested. They have told us about 10 hospitals. They did not deliver them. They have had two decades. They have not prepared. They promised 10 hospitals, and they had better deliver on the South West Healthcare service. There are less people taking 000 calls today than there were two years ago. That is not a government who prepared. That is clear evidence they were ignoring the situation and spinning out all this stuff, trying to tell us they were doing well. This is one hell of a fail.

Mr CHEESEMAN (South Barwon) (17:22): It is with some pleasure this afternoon that I rise to speak on this matter of public importance (MPI), and I must say in listening to the contributions of many people in the chamber this afternoon and in fact in listening to the fantastic contribution that the member for Melton made, it was very clear to me, as someone who has cared about our health system all of my adult life, that the member for Melton has done more for our public health system than, I would argue, anyone else in this place. He has spent his whole adult life advocating to have a strong public health system, and he has spent his whole adult life defending the Victorian public health system, particularly against the horrendous attacks that the Liberals have made at each and every opportunity that they are given that great opportunity to govern this state of Victoria.

I have been involved and around politics for many years, in fact since the mid-1990s, and I must say at each and every election, at each and every budget that I have witnessed Labor governments put together, I have seen firsthand the DNA of Labor governments when it comes to the Victorian health system. What I see time and time and time again is Labor members of Parliament advocating for the public health system in their patch and I see time and time again fantastic Labor members delivering for their communities. I think this MPI very much provides me that opportunity to highlight the fantastic contribution that the member for Melton has made to his community when it comes to his passionate advocacy, which I have seen him undertake internally within the government, to make sure that the Melton hospital is delivered for his community. He is a man that understands the western suburbs of Melbourne. He grew up in the western suburbs. He understands those communities. He understands their health needs, and he puts his heart and soul into representing them at every opportunity. So I am very pleased to be able to very strongly endorse his work and very much put on record where I can the work that I have seen him do in delivering.

I have been given a great opportunity as the Labor member for South Barwon, a growing community and a community that indeed accommodates most—a fair bit at least—of the growth of the Greater Geelong area. I was fortunate as a Labor candidate to be given the opportunity to advocate with the then Minister for Health, the member for Altona, for the needs of my community. I was very passionate that my community, a growing community, very much needed to see health services more local. For many people there were significant challenges in heading into Geelong to the main hospital site and being able to access all of the particularly preventative health needs that they might have, whether it be dialysis or whether it be to respond to drug and alcohol counselling and to work their way through those challenges. I very much wanted to see a new model, a model of investment that would see community hospitals built to help service our community, and I was very pleased through that work to secure a commitment to build a Torquay community hospital not only to service of course Torquay but the whole of the Surf Coast and indeed to provide services more broadly to the Armstrong Creek community. We have secured a site. That site has been announced. It is very much in the heart of Torquay. It is very accessible to not only people in Torquay but also the Armstrong Creek growth community, a growth suburb, who will be able to readily and easily access that site to secure the health needs that they might also have.

I have also been able to very much witness firsthand the passionate advocacy of the member for Footscray, who was in the chamber a little earlier, in working hard for her community to secure a commitment for I think it was $1.5 billion for that particular facility. That will be an amazing hospital servicing that whole western community. Again, I know she is so passionate about Footscray and has been a passionate advocate for Footscray, and there is no doubt that Footscray Hospital will service many western suburbs communities beyond just her immediate seat. It has been fantastic to observe her in action.

In terms of the Andrews Labor government’s commitments in Geelong, at the 2018 election we very much were committed to building additional capacity for the Geelong hospital. We indeed committed that we would build a women’s and children’s hospital. I must say that disproportionately, given the age profile of my seat, I have no doubt there will be in the years to come many, many babies and many, many families that will access a Geelong women’s and children’s health service—a women’s and children’s hospital. In fact I have no doubt that many people will be very pleased that into the future they will be able to tell stories that that is where they were born and that was the hospital that looked after them and their mother very early on in their life.

Of course Geelong is a fantastic community to be in. We have got a fantastic healthcare system. Barwon hospital has very proudly delivered despite all of the challenges of the last couple of years, and I very much want to put on record my thanks on behalf of my community to all of those healthcare workers, whether it be the fantastic ambulance people, the fantastic nurses, the fantastic clinicians, those that have worked in keeping the hospitals clean or those that have worked cleaning and cooking for patients. It has been an unprecedented time. We have had a global pandemic, and that has created absolutely all sorts of challenges, but very proudly the Victorian healthcare system and all of those workers have stood up to those challenges of a once-in-100-year pandemic.

I must say it is interesting to observe the Liberal Party and the opposition in this place. I think it is telling that since the South Australian election that was held only a few months ago, that after observing the South Australian election outcome, the coalition here in this place have dropped pretty much all references to COVID despite where their rhetoric was prior to that, despite their rhetoric over the last two years. I very much think they watched what happened there, they watched their party lose government, and they have changed focus, and they have had to double down on that change of focus during the federal election, as they have no doubt watched the significant pressure that has come onto the federal Treasurer, the member for Kooyong, who for a very large part of the last two years has taken pot shot after pot shot at the Victorian government, and as a consequence of that independents are going to take real— (Time expired)

Ms SHEED (Shepparton) (17:32): I am pleased to have the opportunity on this matter of public importance to speak on health issues, and while we hear so many on this side mourning the fact that they have been unable to secure the sort of funding they might like for hospitals and health services, I can truly say that the Shepparton electorate has had a windfall when it comes to health investment across the last eight years, and I put that down to there certainly having been an established need in the community, but I also put it down to the power of a community having an independent representing it. We are currently looking at the situation in the seat of Nicholls, the federal seat, where we have a strong independent standing there. And aren’t the parties anxious about that? This is an opportunity to for the first time in Victoria’s history have an independent at the state and the federal level working together at both levels to achieve outcomes for our community. How outstanding that would be. But the vitriol, the advertising, the misinformation that circulates around our social media outlets and around the polling booths now in relation to the risks of having an independent is extraordinary.

I say that I have been a champion for independents because I have worked with the government of the day to highlight the issues in my electorate and to get some investment into what had been for so long neglected. If ever a community had been put on the drip-feed, it was the Shepparton electorate. And we did have a hospital; we had a hospital, but every little bit of it just came in dribs and drabs over a very long period of time, and it was not good enough. We are a major regional area. Our health service is one of the major regional providers, and to get the investment that we needed was critical. So in the first eight years—in these eight years; we are in our eighth year—I am pleased to say that we got the $230 million investment for the first stage of Goulburn Valley Health, and that is just an amazing refurb. There is a five-storey building with new surgical wards, with new medical wards and with operating theatres, and there are refurbs of midwifery, a new paediatric ward, a new special care nursery and a new emergency department. All these things were so needed, and it is a credit to our community that they were able to get behind me and come together as a community to highlight the needs. There are many other things that I could talk about that we have been lucky to receive, but I will save that for a budget reply speech.

Here, just to talk about health, I have to say it has been an incredibly pleasing time, and just in this year’s budget we have received more than $163 million to build a new purpose-built mental health facility, which will add 15 beds to what we already have and take us to about 35 mental health beds for the whole of our region.

It needs to be remembered that Goulburn Valley Health not only services that part of northern Victoria that we call the Goulburn Valley but also extends up into New South Wales. Deniliquin, for instance, has had all its maternity services—obstetrics and gynaecology—closed down, so people from there have to come either to Echuca or onto Shepparton to get the services they need. We know for a fact that so many services are under pressure, but in addition to the mental health service there is funding there for what might go in it, and that is the mental health and alcohol and drug hubs, also announced in this year’s budget for our community and something that is just so greatly needed. We also finally received the $25 million which will build us an early parenting centre. For those who have heard me talk about the mother-baby unit that we have needed for our region for a very long time—I have only been talking about it for eight years, but so many in our community, especially in our medical and nursing community, have advocated for this for so long—this will be a 10-bed unit that will service parents of young children between zero and four. There will be so many services that can be provided out of that. Certainly my vision for it is for it to be in the heart of the Shepparton CBD area near the Hunter building, which has all our community care services associated with it. It is just an extraordinary situation that we have received this funding and also a credit to the Goulburn Valley Health Foundation, which has stood beside everyone advocating for this year after year. The government has listened to our concerns that I have raised on behalf of the Shepparton community.

But there is no doubt that we have a health crisis, and I do find it extraordinary to hear that COVID may have nothing to do with it. Just today in question time I pointed out that we have an average of about 11 000 cases reported. God knows how many there really are. People say you should triple that figure. There are 500 people in hospital—it has been on a trajectory going up—and between 70 and 100 Victorians dying each week. These are extraordinary numbers, and they are so reflected in our health services and their capacity to provide what is needed in our hospitals and in our health services. The stress and trauma that that is putting on our health service workers is undoubted. I think anyone who works with people in the system and talks to doctors and nurses knows the stress and the difficulty they are under.

Of course we have that confirmed by our administrators in the hospital system. Just this morning as I was driving to work I heard the chair of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine talking about the crisis in regional areas, where there are people waiting for transfers into metropolitan hospitals with conditions that cannot be treated in their own region. They might need an angiogram, they might have sepsis, they might have really severe conditions where they are waiting, waiting to be transferred to a major metropolitan hospital. We know that the burden of ill health has become so much greater during COVID—not just with COVID cases, but what has really transpired has also been a neglect by people of their health during the past two years, and that is adding to the burden in a really significant way.

The New South Wales upper house has just in recent days tabled a report into health outcomes and access to health and hospital services in rural, regional and remote parts of the state, and a senate inquiry is also looking into the provision of services in regional areas. It is a crisis. It has been an issue for a long time, because the one factor that we have faced for many years is the issue of recruitment of professionals to service our rural communities. Just presently at Goulburn Valley Health we are short of 80 doctors, 60 nurses and many other allied health professionals. So while it has been fantastic to get the investment in infrastructure in our community, there are a lot of other issues that do need to be addressed, and for us it is so much about the location of doctors—where they are best to be—and most of them want to be in the city.

It is very hard to attract professional doctors and a range of others to come out into regional areas, and something has got to be done about that. We have seen the federal government trying to address it by having medical schools in regional centres on the basis that if you train them there they might stay, but the figures are so low. There is no way that is going to solve the problem. It just might help a little bit. So there has to be some serious thinking about it, and I want to call on all sides in this house to agree to and commit to at the forthcoming election a full inquiry into health services in regional and rural areas in Victoria. We have seen it done in New South Wales with a recent report. The Senate are doing it. Victoria needs to do it so that we have that overall view and really clear picture of what the issues are, what is needed, but more than that: how did we get to this and how can we address it? It really does need to be about solutions. I think that is a critical pathway now that we need to go on, because we are in a time where we are going to have the burden of COVID with us for a very long time, and that is going to be really putting a lot more pressure on every health service across the state.

We know that aged care is provided throughout a lot of our health facilities in regional areas and that the pressure they will be put under will be even greater than it has been. We are seeing such a change in the language at the moment around COVID and the impact of that, but we do need to maintain full transparency about every aspect of it—about the numbers, about what it is doing to our health services, how it impacts and what, maybe, we can do about it. Does there need to be more done? So I— (Time expired)

Ms GREEN (Yan Yean) (17:42): What a breath of fresh air it always is to hear the wise words of the member for Shepparton, and it really made me think, in hearing about her community, of the last two days I spent in Mildura. The member for Mildura has spoken often about the fight her community had to get a hospital back in public hands, and similarly the member for Shepparton gives credit to her community for having raised their voices about the need for decent health care in her community. For any side of politics to think that any public hospital should be sold off, but particularly in a regional area—being in Mildura the last two days and catching up with health professionals and local councillors, they still shake their heads after all these years—to ever think that there is a reason for profit-driven health care in a place as remote as Mildura, you would have to have rocks in your head. We had Mildura, and on that side they will say, ‘Oh, we don’t want you to talk about the Kennett government. That was a long time ago’. Well, just imagine if we had had an infectious diseases hospital in Fairfield to fight COVID. Just imagine if that hospital had not been closed down—

Mr Riordan interjected.

Ms GREEN: Pipe down, Polwarth. You will get your chance if you actually want to stand up for a change. Just imagine if a government that was in this place between 2010 and 2014 had the opportunity to mend its ways and say, ‘We put our hand up. We should not have privatised that hospital in Mildura when that contract came up’. And the now Premier, when he was Minister for Health, I have no doubt that under no circumstance would he have re-signed that as a private hospital. He would have pulled it back into public ownership, but what did Mr Davis in the other place do? What did the Baillieu and Napthine governments do? They signed up again. They signed up that Mildura community to have inadequate health care, just like when they closed mental health beds in Hamilton under the great deified Mary Wooldridge, the then Minister for Mental Health.

If you saw the Four Corners episode recently and the connection between Aspen health and her brother, a former health minister, you have got to ask questions. And when you think about this lot putting forward a matter of public importance on health, they are a late convert, aren’t they?

Mr Riordan: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, on relevance, I think it is a wideranging debate, as always, but if the member for Yan Yean wants to start slandering and throwing accusations of corruption around, she need look no further than some of her colleagues.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Your point of order was on relevance, member for Polwarth. I think the member for Yan Yean was being relevant.

Ms GREEN: It is very interesting that the member for Polwarth should mention corruption when I did not—very interesting that he should mention that. That absolutely struck a nerve.

I was in this place when Mr Davis in the other place was the Minister for Health, and my community remembers that in their first budget they said, ‘We’re going to build an ambulance branch in Wallan’. That is what they said. The member for Eildon, then the member for Seymour, kept trumpeting that—in that budget, in the budget after—and then she went quiet. She never did an adjournment matter on it—‘Where is it? What’s going on?’. And when I did an adjournment matter I got one of the rudest and funniest responses from the then Minister for Health, David Davis, saying, ‘You stand condemned for not delivering the Wallan ambulance because you’ve never raised it ever before in the Parliament’. Well, Earth to Mr Davis: it actually was not in my electorate then, it was in the member for Seymour’s electorate. She was the one that was being quiet. But there it came, when they started to panic and think, ‘We’re not going to get back in’. Not that they had ever shown any interest in delivering health services in the north—

Mr Riordan interjected.

Ms GREEN: Pipe down, member for Polwarth. They discovered Yan Yean because it was notionally below 50 per cent. ‘Oh, jeepers creepers, we’d better start promising something’. And then just before the election they put up a fence and unveiled a sign for the Wallan ambulance branch. But thank goodness we got into office and we actually built it. The member for Altona, then Minister for Health, built that. In their first budget the budget papers claimed that they had completed the Kinglake ambulance branch. It was something that the Premier, then the Minister for Health, in the previous budget had funded. He had made sure it was established after Black Saturday on the back of the 12-hour branch that was set up in Whittlesea that then went 24 hours and then became a peak-period unit in Kinglake. In their first budget papers they claimed that the Kinglake ambulance branch was constructed. I thought, ‘Oh, it’s a week or two since I’ve been up there’. I took a drive. There were foundations. The slab had not even been poured. This is how out of touch they were.

And then what we have seen from this lot in opposition for 3½ years, and for 2½ years during a pandemic, is that unlike any opposition in any other part of the country they have not acted like this has been a health crisis. You have seen in South Australia, in New South Wales, in WA and in Queensland the oppositions have spoken with one voice with their government because they understood that this was a once-in-a-100-year pandemic. Those opposite kept denying it was a health crisis. They kept undermining the messages from the chief health officer. The member for South-West Coast—I admire often her work, and I have said that—I hope would deeply regret standing out the front with a member for Western Metropolitan Region, Bernie Finn, and a member for Northern Metropolitan Region in the upper house, Craig Ondarchie, who posted and said, ‘Here we are with some of our closest friends’. The member for South-West Coast was out on the steps with those conspiracy theorists. I saw her with my own eyes.

The other thing is the member for South-West Coast made a lot of mention of Portland health service today. I can actually inform the house that what the member for South-West Coast said today in the house about the Portland health service is completely at odds with what they have just said themselves on their own website. On their own Facebook page they have said that—

Members interjecting.

Ms GREEN: Yes, you will need to apologise, member South-West Coast, because what the Facebook page of the Portland hospital says is that:

There was a claim made today that all elective surgery is being halted at …

Portland District Health.

We’d like to reassure the community that this is not the case.

One of our anaesthetists was unavailable this week, which meant a small number of elective surgeries had to be rescheduled, but all others have, and will continue to take place as planned.

We also have an additional locum anaesthetist joining us tomorrow (12 May) as an additional resource.

We ask that anyone scheduled in for surgery at Portland in coming weeks, please follow the advice of your local doctors and nurses.

We thank our incredible staff for all the work they’re doing to deliver high quality care and services for Portland.

So the member for South-West Coast absolutely owes an apology to the Portland and district health service and every staff member that works there and every patient who has been distressed thinking that they are not going to get their surgery. She is wrong, wrong, wrong, and it just shows how politically motivated this matter of public importance was, and it should be condemned.

Members interjecting.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I ask the house to come to order. Member for South-West Coast, you had your turn.

Mr RIORDAN (Polwarth) (17:52): I rise to speak on this matter of public importance about the absolutely abysmal state that we find Victorian health care in after this government’s continual inability to get on top of the crisis that we face. It was interesting hearing the member for Yan Yean, who spent so much COVID time in South-West Coast she has decided now to be an advocate for that electorate, so clearly she understands what a wonderful part of the world the member for South-West Coast and I come from.

But to the point of where we find health care, in preparation for today’s debate I could not help but notice that this government has a terrible habit of announcing, reannouncing, announcing, reannouncing. We talk about these issues here: the failure to complete any of the 10 community hospitals as promised in the election in 2018—not only a failure to complete but a failure to even start. I was trawling through the many, many, many media announcements that the member for South Barwon, the Premier at times, the Minister for Health and others have been involved in. For those of us that know the member for South Barwon, we know that his recent health kick has transformed him and he is looking pretty fit and vigorous these days as whip in the Parliament. But, unfortunately for the member, when you google ‘Torquay community hospital’ you get an avalanche of photographs of the announcements and reannouncements, and sometimes he is almost unrecognisable in the photos, as is the Premier. The two of them have changed considerably since 2018 when they first made the announcement, but so too has the promise. It is not only the changing faces of the people wheeling out these promises, but the promise itself has changed as well. We have newspaper articles where the Premier is sort of half committing to overnight beds in the Torquay community hospital. Then there is the Victorian Health Building Authority, which says, ‘No, there are definitely not going to be beds’. Then there are the quite heartfelt comments from the Premier where he says a young child who wakes in the middle of the night and breaks a limb will be able to go to the Torquay community health service. Then others talk about it only being available in normal business hours and not providing urgent care. In fact you will need to continue to go through to Geelong. So not only have we got a promise that was promised in 2018, we have a promise where it is not clear to the community what it is.

But why the Torquay community ought to be very concerned is that not only do they not exactly know what they are getting with their community health service but back in 2018 the Premier and the member for South Barwon promised that this was going to be part of a $675 million health commitment—10 hospitals for $675 million. So how do we think that might have panned out in this hospital crisis?

Let us go through not what the government says but what actually happens. In this budget, the budget just put down, let us go through some of the health spending that this government has done. The Victorian Heart Hospital was to have cost $150 million; it has cost so far $564 million. That is a $414 million miss on the budget. The Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital was to be $201 million; it cost $306 million. It is overblown. Ballarat Health Services was $461 million; it has cost $541 million—$80 million overblown. Goulburn Valley Health—$58.2 million overblown. Frankston Hospital—$43.3 million. That is by $750 million in four years you have missed the mark. You would get closer to Mars than what you would with that sort of budgeting. This government is incompetent—budgetarily incompetent. It could not add up one plus one.

My community of Torquay is expected to believe that a budget figure that the member for South Barwon and the Premier dreamed up four years ago is even going to get close. My community is going to get short-changed. They are going to be left with an empty paddock, just like the people in Melton. What have Melton got after four years? An empty paddock. What have the people in Torquay got? An empty paddock. What have they got? Empty paddocks. It is not a hospital, it is an agricultural enterprise that you are dreaming up, you lot. You are just going to be putting cattle and sheep on it. That is what it is. There is no point. You just reannounce, reannounce and reannounce, and it goes on and on.

Let us get to the Geelong women’s hospital. Let us look at the merry-go-round history of that. It was first announced in 2018. The federal government is out there to support the Geelong community. They gave them $50 million of the $150 million it was going to cost then. What does the minister say it is going to cost now? $500 million. But not only that, the magic trick of this government in its incompetence in managing health—

Ms Britnell: It doesn’t put it in the budget.

Mr RIORDAN: They got TBCs. What is that? ‘The Bank of China’, is that what it means? Is that who is paying for it? TBC this year, TBC next year and TBC the next year—and you have not even got a finish date.

Mr Foley: Keep going.

Mr RIORDAN: So when is it going to be finished? How can you produce a budget? How can you expect the community to believe you, Minister? How can you possibly expect anyone to believe you?

Mr Foley: Keep going.

Mr RIORDAN: Well, I am going to keep going because health in this state is littered with broken, unfulfilled promises to communities. We know it must be election time because they are reannouncing them all again. How many elections, Minister, do you think you can get out of the one promise? At how many elections can you do it before the community wakes up and realises the reason there is ramping night after night in this state, why people cannot get ambulances and why hospitals are having to cancel surgeries? Why? Because what you say is not what you do, and that is the problem. That is the problem, Minister.

Members interjecting.

Mr RIORDAN: What? Record investments TBC. You cannot go, ‘We’re going to spend $500 million on a Geelong hospital’ and not put it in the budget. You have no accountability. It is not only me that is saying you have no accountability.

Members interjecting.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Member for Polwarth, through the Chair. I ask members to cease interjecting.

Mr RIORDAN: In terms of this matter of public importance today, the health crisis Victorians are feeling on a daily basis is a direct result of poor financial management right across the health sector, from a raft of promises that have not been fulfilled. There are empty paddocks from Melton to Torquay and 10 other communities around that have not been able to get off the ground. A Geelong women’s and children’s hospital has been promised for years but never delivered on. We have failed to turn a sod on the Maryborough hospital; the important agricultural and regional area of Maryborough has been abandoned and left waiting for a promise that has not been delivered on.

The Victorian community expects better. It knows that it is not what this government says, it is what it does. It knows that it cannot be trusted to deliver on what the Victorian people need. It needs a government which can plan for the future and deliver on those plans, and you cannot deliver on plans when you simply have run out of money. When the Victorian people go to the polls later in the year they will have a clear choice. They will be able to look and ask, ‘What have we got for a debt that now equals that of Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia combined?’. What have we got for it? We have got empty promises, budgets that cannot deliver and time lines that the government are too embarrassed to even put to print because they themselves know that they can no longer deliver on some of the empty promises that they are putting out there.