Ambulance response times
Mr NEWBURY (Brighton) (14:07): My question is to the Premier. Last week Ambulance Victoria evidence to the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee showed that while code 1 ambulance arrivals within 15 minutes should be at 85 per cent, they are now arriving within 15 minutes only between 50 and 60 per cent of the time. These arrival times are deadly and have potentially cost 21 Victorians their lives. How many Victorians have to die before the Premier gets ambulance response times back to where they should be?
Mr ANDREWS (Mulgrave—Premier) (14:08): I thank the member for Brighton for his question. There are a number of points that I will make. Firstly, I am pleased at his acknowledgement that it is not for him or anyone in this chamber to determine the cause of death of anyone. That is the work of the coroner, and we should let the coroner get about that work without political interference from those opposite. To assert that you are the coroner, you are politically interfering in the work of the coroner. That is important. I acknowledge and welcome that the member for Brighton now seems to realise that. I am very interested in his references to code 1 lights-and-sirens response times within 15 minutes. They were—and he raised this measure, Deputy Speaker, just before we get a point of order about this not being relevant—at 84 per cent. In fact in excess of 84 per cent of code 1 call-outs were responded to within 15 minutes in late 2019—best response ever. Let us go back three years before then, shall we?
Members interjecting.
Mr ANDREWS: You want to talk about ambulance response times? Every day and twice on Sundays, mate—every day if you like. And they were by choice. There was no pandemic in 2015. There was no pandemic in 2015, there was no one-in-100 year event in 2015, there were not 3000 or 4000 people calling ESTA every day in 2015. They chose an ambulance crisis. Who would do that?
Instead, since 2015 we have recruited hundreds of extra staff and invested hundreds of millions of extra dollars. In partnership with our paramedic workforce we have repaired the damage done by choice by those opposite, and we are equally committed to repairing the damage that this COVID pandemic has done, whether it be in ambulance response times and performance, elective surgery throughput and wait times, emergency department presentations—the list goes on. All of those challenges are not 100 per cent but are manifestly impacted by a one-in-100-year event, and anyone who cannot see that has no business ever being in charge of running the health system.
Mr NEWBURY (Brighton) (14:11): Prior to the pandemic the Andrews government changed ambulance emergency call-out classifications to disturbingly move things like stroke and cardiac heart problems from a code 1 emergency ambulance dispatch to the lesser code 2 and 3 classifications, which now have an average response time of 44 minutes. Why did the Premier allow this to happen to stroke and cardiac victims?
Members interjecting.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I assume you are interested in the Premier’s answer.
Mr ANDREWS (Mulgrave—Premier) (14:11): Thank you, Deputy Speaker. I completely reject the way in which the member for Brighton has described these matters. It would not be clinical advice and other well-established processes in terms of classifications—oh, no, it would be me or the health minister doing that work, wouldn’t it? That is point 1.
Point 2, do not hold your breath waiting for anyone in this government to be lectured about response time standards. You refused to release response times. You refused to release the very response times you now pretend to care about. Maybe that is why you were so appalling by choice when you were in government. You cut the budget. You chose the worst response times. We repaired your damage, and we will repair the damage of this pandemic.