Wednesday, 8 June 2022

Questions without notice and ministers statements

Health system

Mr GUY (Bulleen—Leader of the Opposition) (14:03): My question is to the Premier. Last sitting week the opposition passed details on to the Premier about the case of 15-month-old baby Lawson, who suffered a seizure at home in Girgarre. In the Premier’s response to the opposition not once did the Premier refer to Lawson, his individual circumstance or why there was a failure that led to a near catastrophe for Lawson and his family. Why does the Premier ask for details to be passed on to him when in the case of baby Lawson his response did not refer once to Lawson, his suffering or his circumstance?

Mr ANDREWS (Mulgrave—Premier) (14:03): I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. Just before coming to question time I received a bundle of correspondence from the Leader of the Opposition claiming on the covering letter to be all the details of all the cases that have been raised in the Parliament. This was not by choice, this was only after the point that lots of matters have been raised and very few—it is much more about the politics and much less about the patients—

A member interjected.

Mr ANDREWS: Well, I will just come to that, then. Interject, keep coming and we will get to you!

The SPEAKER: Order! Members on both sides!

Mr ANDREWS: Some of them have names: Sarah. Issue? Comments: was booked for surgery, had surgery cancelled. No surname, no address, no hospital, no details of what the surgery was and no dates. I do not want to diminish any patient who has been let down by the system given COVID pressure, but I am sure that there are many, many people with that first name who received care across the health system. The notion that you could provide that and somehow get up here providing lectures on follow-up is beyond me. The Leader of the Opposition has been caught out. He is only interested in the politics. He is not interested in the patients, and that is rather borne out not just by his conduct here today while he has raised these issues but of course his record as he sat around the cabinet table cutting hundreds of millions of dollars out of our hospital system. If you care about patients, then you would provide the details so that we could do what we all want to do, and that is to follow up, provide care, provide support, provide information and learn from any of those errors or mistakes or frustrations or difficulties that those patients have faced.

I will give the Leader of the Opposition a hot tip. I am not taking advice on follow-up from him when he has provided me with a bunch of papers today that do not have the names, addresses, conditions, hospitals or contact details—or even a description necessarily of what the problem is. How might you follow up a letter that has simply got a person’s first name? Every year hundreds of thousands of Victorians are treated in our hospitals, and I dare say, there are many with that first name. I am not going to ask our health department to do an entire search of the entire record in order to play the political games that dominate this low-road Leader of the Opposition. You are not about patients, you are about politics, and you have been caught out.

Mr GUY (Bulleen—Leader of the Opposition) (14:06): Well, after all that, I did ask a question about 15-month-old baby Lawson. In my supplementary, I advise that Lawson’s family advised that no government agency and no-one from the government—not the Premier or the minister—or the minister’s or the Premier’s office have bothered to contact the family since their matter was raised and their full details passed on to the Premier, post question time, from the opposition to the Premier’s private office. The Premier’s letter to the opposition referred that the establishment of a process to review such instances as this has now been undertaken. If that is true, Premier, how can it be that Lawson’s family after two weeks has still not been contacted?

Members interjecting.

The SPEAKER: Order! I warn members if they shout across the chamber, they will be removed from the chamber without further warning.

Mr ANDREWS (Mulgrave—Premier) (14:07): The Leader of the Opposition has got absolutely no right or entitlement to call into question the follow-up of patients when he refuses, as of 10 minutes ago, to provide the details of the patients he pretends to care about. My message to the Leader of the Opposition is: play less of the political games, and let us work together to look after the patients.

Mr Guy: On a point of order, Speaker, on relevance, I asked the Premier a question about a 15-month-old boy whose full details were passed on to him. Not once has the Premier referred in his substantive or supplementary to the details of the 15-month-old whose full details were passed on to him or how the Premier then replied to the opposition around that case. The question and the supplementary were around that issue. I seek for you to bring back the Premier to answering that question.

The SPEAKER: Order! Just to rule on the point of order, I listened carefully to both questions that were asked and to the Premier’s answer. He is being relevant to the question that was asked.

Mr ANDREWS: Thank you, Speaker. Also did I reply or didn’t I? Get your story straight. If it is good enough to provide the details in full of this patient—and I am more than happy to go back to my office and check out exactly what has happened with that patient—mate, you can provide all of them, lest you be thought to be playing nothing more than political games. If patients are your focus, give us the details of those patients, and we will take care of them. You can be certain of that.

The SPEAKER: Order! I remind the Premier to direct his comments through the Chair.