Tuesday, 24 May 2022

Ambulance services

Mr GUY (Bulleen—Leader of the Opposition) (14:09): My question is to the Premier. Evidence to the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee (PAEC) shows that the government was aware each time when 18 Victorians had tragically died waiting for an ambulance from October 2021 to March 2022. Why did it take over six months, with then 18 deaths of Victorians like Stewart Grant, Alfred Edwards and Neslihan Kurosawa for the government to finally act on the crisis engulfing our ambulance service?

Mr ANDREWS (Mulgrave—Premier) (14:10): I in no way make any judgements or reflections on the families or individuals that have been mentioned—just to be clear at the outset. I am not sure what evidence, what verballing the Leader of the Opposition is doing about PAEC—whether you want to re-read that part of the question. Did the Leader of the Opposition precisely refer to something or did he just make a ‘at PAEC it was said’? These are matters—

Members interjecting.

Mr ANDREWS: No, I am sorry, these are matters of life and death. Too right they are! And if you are going to make assertions—

Ms Staley: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, the Premier has begun to debate the question, and I would just ask you to bring him back to answering it.

Mr Pakula: On the point of order, Deputy Speaker, the Premier is quite properly pointing out that the Leader of the Opposition in his question made a vague assertion about evidence that was led at PAEC without giving any particulars or any details about where that evidence was.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Premier was being relevant to the question.

Mr ANDREWS: Well, I am not sure who led this evidence, whether it was a departmental—

Mr Guy interjected.

Mr ANDREWS: That is not in the question, though, is it?

Members interjecting.

Mr ANDREWS: Because that is not what the acting CEO of Ambulance Victoria said at all. There were three cases that were referenced at PAEC. The CEO of Ambulance Victoria is in no way responsible for the Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority, but that is another point made. Again, it is very, very easy if all you are interested in doing is playing politics with these things, trying to obtain a political advantage from tragedy. If people who now raise these tragedies actually cared about these issues, then when they were in charge they perhaps would not have cut ambulance funding.

Members interjecting.

Mr ANDREWS: They perhaps would not have shut down ambulance stations. They perhaps would not have gone to war with our ambos. They perhaps would not have delivered by choice—not by chance, but by choice—the worst ambulance response times that we have seen. All of these were choices that were made by people who chose to cut funding, go to war with our ambos and deliver appalling performance. Imagine if the global pandemic had arrived in March of 2015 instead of March of 2020, when our government had not had a chance to repair the damage done by those opposite, our government had not been given a chance to recruit hundreds and hundreds of extra paramedics and our government had not been given a chance to repair the damage from hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cuts to our health system made by, you guessed it, those opposite.

Members interjecting.

Mr ANDREWS: Choices, yes. Some chose to gut our ambulance service, others worked very hard to deliver the best ambulance response times on record. We repaired the damage done by those opposite, and we will repair the damage done by COVID-19. Every Victorian can be confident of that.

Mr GUY (Bulleen—Leader of the Opposition) (14:13): With the government confirming via Ambulance Victoria that there has been a code orange in the ambulance service declared on average every single week for the last year, what more evidence is required for the Premier to finally admit that the ambulance system is in crisis and that government inaction is costing Victorians their lives?

Mr ANDREWS (Mulgrave—Premier) (14:14): It is put to me by the Leader of the Opposition that there is government inaction. In every budget every year more resources for Ambulance Victoria, more vehicles, more equipment, more paramedics, more stations. We are not shutting stations, not shutting—

Members interjecting.

Mr ANDREWS: Oh, really? Worst response times? Best ever before the pandemic—we will just leave that bit out. That is a little bit inconvenient. This is not about convenience, it is not about politics, it is not about grubby little games to try and look after yourself. It is about looking after Victorians. We will not be deterred from repairing the damage of this pandemic with exactly the same method, exactly the same urgency, exactly the same values that we used to repair the damage done by none other than those opposite.