Wednesday, 25 May 2022

Questions without notice and ministers statements

Health system

Mr GUY (Bulleen—Leader of the Opposition) (14:01): My question is to the Premier. Australasian College for Emergency Medicine president Clare Skinner has said about Victoria’s health crisis:

We can tell you that this is not just a Covid-related problem.

The reality is Covid has only exposed cracks that were pre-existing in the system.

Does the Premier stand by his statements that the crisis in Victoria’s health system, the crisis in the 000 system and the crisis with ambulance dispatch, all of which have cost people their lives, are only due to COVID?

Mr ANDREWS (Mulgrave—Premier) (14:02): I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. I have never made any such claim.

Members interjecting.

Mr ANDREWS: I thought this was a serious matter of life and death—it is a laugh now. What you have put to me is wrong, and instead of playing political games we are going to get—

Members interjecting.

Mr ANDREWS: Well, you can laugh all you want, but we do not laugh at our nurses, we do not laugh at our ambos, we do not laugh at our doctors, we do not laugh at patients. We are there to provide support in record terms to provide better care. Those opposite can deny all they want that we are in the midst of a one-in-100-year event; they may have missed that. It is real, and proof positive is as follows: if what is put forward by the Leader of the Opposition is accurate, how then did we go from the worst ambulance response times recorded—that would be just after we took over in 2015—how did we go from that position, one that was by choice through cuts, to then delivering the best ambulance response times ever recorded just before COVID? We repaired the damage done by those opposite, and we will repair the damage done by this virus.

Mr GUY (Bulleen—Leader of the Opposition) (14:03): Last night the health system declared a code orange, meaning that yet again Victorians cannot get the emergency health care they need at the time that it is required. Can the Premier explain why the 52nd code orange over the last year has been declared?

Members interjecting.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I will call the Premier when the house comes to order.

Mr ANDREWS (Mulgrave—Premier) (14:04): You asked the first question; you seem to have forgotten the way you constructed it. The Leader of the Opposition put it to me that my contention is that the only trouble, challenge or difficulty in the health system, ever, is related to COVID. I have never made that call—ever. Unlike the Leader of the Opposition, I know and understand pre pandemic, during the pandemic and after the pandemic that if you think there are easy days in our health system, that is wrong. Our health professionals work every day in challenging circumstances. If you were not at war with them, you might know that.

A member interjected.

Mr ANDREWS: Unprecedented demand? Would that perhaps be part of why you call a code? Thousands of staff away sick—would that be why you would call a code, perhaps? If these things are not obvious to you, then you have got no place ever running the health system.

Members interjecting.

Mr ANDREWS: So if a one-in-100-year event lasts for two years, it is not a thing? Honestly, these people want to run the health system. They want to run the health system. You cannot even run your own party. Goodness me!