Thursday, 26 May 2022

Ambulance services

Mr NEWBURY (Brighton) (14:32): My question is to the Premier. Ambulance Victoria—

Members interjecting.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Mr NEWBURY: We are talking about people dying, Deputy Premier.

Members interjecting.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Deputy Premier, come to order.

Mr NEWBURY: Thank you. My question is to the Premier. Ambulance Victoria has confirmed that on average 35 taxis are sent out each day to Victorians who have called for an ambulance. How many of these cases of a taxi replacing an ambulance are doing so for an emergency call-out that would normally require an ambulance?

Mr ANDREWS (Mulgrave—Premier) (14:32): I thank the member for Brighton for his question, and I am more than happy to refer his question to Ambulance Victoria for a detailed response. I was out at ESTA just last week with the Minister for Emergency Services. I was there for quite some time, and I was honoured to meet with ESTA call takers as well as dispatchers, as well as those who do not work for ESTA, they work for Victoria Police, for Fire Rescue Victoria and also for Ambulance Victoria—to meet with them and thank them for their work in extraordinarily high pressure, high demand, really challenging circumstances. I thanked them on behalf of all Victorians then, and I do so again now. They are all working very, very hard.

The member for Brighton may not be aware, but at Ambulance Victoria there are kind of two streams. There are code 0 and code 1—urgent, lights-and-sirens emergency response. There is then a secondary triage program called RefCom, and that is principally ambulance paramedics. So when someone has called for an ambulance but does not need a lights-and-sirens, time-critical response—they are not, for instance, having, say, a cardiac event or having a stroke or have not had trauma or are part of a road accident, so they do not need the lights-and-sirens response but they need a response nonetheless—they are sent to what is called RefCom, and there are tens of thousands of Victorians every year that are in longer consultations. It is not minutes; they may talk with a paramedic for a much longer period of time. Services are wrapped around those people to give them what they need, and that is almost always referral to a number of other different health providers. It is not uncommon for people to receive alternative advice to take alternative transport to a physio appointment, to a GP, to hospital, but not in time-critical, urgent circumstances.

I am not quite sure whether the member for Brighton knows so little about the system that he wants a situation where no matter what your clinical circumstances you get a lights-and-sirens ambulance. Like, nowhere in the world could have enough lights-and-sirens ambulances that everyone who makes a call gets a response as if they are having a heart attack even though they are not. These decisions, thankfully, are not made by the member for Brighton. They are made by experts—expert call takers as well as dispatchers. They are confirmed and validated by ambulance paramedics who are embedded in ESTA. They are run by experienced paramedics in that secondary triage RefCom system. And sometimes non-urgent, non-lights-and-sirens modes of transport are exactly what the person needs, as opposed to diverting an ambulance from a time-critical patient to send it to someone who is not time critical.

Mr NEWBURY (Brighton) (14:35): In the 2021 financial year taxis were sent out to replace an ambulance around 10 000 times. Yet in the first nine months of this year alone a taxi was sent out instead of an ambulance also around 10 000 times. Can the Premier explain why under his watch Victoria is on track for almost a 30 per cent increase in the use of taxis instead of ambulances?

Mr ANDREWS (Mulgrave—Premier) (14:36): COVID, maybe? Do you think that might be it—a one-in-100-year event, maybe? Maybe that might be why we have got record demand. Let us be absolutely crystal clear. The member for Brighton, in a very expensive policy announcement, which he is wont to do—I am not sure whether he has checked with the shadow cabinet—wants no more cabs for people who need a cab, not an ambulance. So if you call—that is all you have to do—if you call 000, you get a lights-and-sirens ambulance under this one. This is what you get. So whether you need it—

Members interjecting.

Mr ANDREWS: Well, you had better get buying ambulances, mate, because you will need a few. Experts determine based on clinical need and years of experience what the appropriate response is. If it is the view of those opposite that every single person who calls 000 will get a lights-and-sirens ambulance within 15 minutes, well, that is a very different approach to the one you took when you were last in government.