Wednesday, 8 June 2022

Health system

Mr WELLS (Rowville) (14:27): My question is to the Premier. Last week in question time I asked the Premier about Adrian, a cancer patient from Rowville who was suffering a stroke, being rushed to Monash Medical Centre and having to wait in the emergency department. The Premier’s response in Hansard was:

This patient and others like him may well learn from what occurred to him.

Premier, what lessons could Adrian learn given that he had actually had a stroke?

Mr ANDREWS (Mulgrave—Premier) (14:27): I said no such thing.

Members interjecting.

Mr ANDREWS: I thought this was a gravely serious matter—now we are all laughing. For the father of the house to make this sort of allegation—

Ms Staley: On a point of order, the Premier is misleading the house. Hansard says:

This patient and others like him may well learn from what occurred to him.

The SPEAKER: Order! The member will know—I am sure the member knows—there are appropriate forms for raising those sorts of matters, and it is not via a point of order.

Mr ANDREWS: Might I just make this point: many of us here, in fact all of us in one way or the other through our immediate family and our extended family, will have been touched by cancer. I find it absolutely outrageous that there would be any suggestion that I or anyone in this place would be disparaging of a cancer patient, let alone one that by all accounts has been let down—

Members interjecting.

The SPEAKER: Order! Members on both sides have been warned.

Mr ANDREWS: No such comment was made. I did not say or intimate or infer that a patient can learn from failings of the system. I have on dozens of occasions made the point that if those opposite simply provided us with details—and I will credit the member for Rowville, who has provided—in fact the member for Rowville I think has provided more information than the Leader of the Opposition did in the bundle of documents I got today, so I am genuinely indebted. Talk it up a bit, team! I am genuinely indebted to the member for Rowville for following up on this matter. What I am not prepared to thank him for is frankly a shameful inference. It is simply wrong. He knows it to be wrong.

Members interjecting.

Mr ANDREWS: The member for Warrandyte, who may have missed this because he is so infrequently here, so infrequently allowed in the chamber because of his appalling behaviour, would know that I have made the comment—and, Speaker, you have heard me say it as well—dozens and dozens and dozens of times: give us the details, because if we need to provide support to the person, we will. Give us the details, because if we can learn from any failings, then we stand ready to do that. I have known the member for Rowville for a very long time and I have an abiding respect for him, but this question and the inference in it, which he knows to be wrong, do him no credit.

Mr WELLS (Rowville) (14:30): Why did the Premier choose to insult and victim blame a man who had had a stroke rather than himself learn from what had occurred to Adrian and fix the problem so that it does not happen to anyone else?

Mr ANDREWS (Mulgrave—Premier) (14:31): I think I have dealt with that in the substantive answer. No such comment was made, and to suggest otherwise reflects more on the questioner than it does on anything I have said in this chamber. I am further advised that this matter was apparently raised with or at least was known by the minister’s office before it was raised in question time. The minister’s office has I think been in communication with the member for Rowville—and again, I am grateful to him for raising it and providing information—prior to it being raised in Parliament. I am further advised that Monash Health has been in contact with the family. So the notion that anyone is blaming anybody is simply wrong—the notion that I reflected adversely against someone who has been let down by the system—when in fact the record shows that you raised it and we are providing help and support for that person. Your question simply shows that you are all about the politics and not about the patients.