Wednesday, 8 June 2022

Ambulance services

Ms McLEISH (Eildon) (14:34): I too have a question for the Premier. Forty-eight-year-old Bradley from Mansfield woke last Thursday in severe pain. Three hours later he was still in agony and getting worse, so his wife called an ambulance. He was informed none were available and was offered a taxi, which would have taken an hour to get to him before then making the trip to Wangaratta 100 kilometres away. His wife was so worried about him she decided to bundle him into her own car and drive to Wangaratta hospital. Can the Premier advise how many emergency cases like Bradley’s are now being offered taxis to get to a hospital because an ambulance just is not available?

Mr ANDREWS (Mulgrave—Premier) (14:35): My advice is that ESTA and Ambulance Victoria do not provide taxis to what they deem to be an emergency case. So, you see, the member for Evelyn has made an assumption there, and again I will ask Ambulance Victoria to—

Members interjecting.

Mr ANDREWS: Sorry, Eildon—the member for Eildon. Just so we do not get a question next week about what Hansard says: Eildon, the member for Eildon. The honourable member has made an assumption about the clinical classification of that particular patient. I am happy, if I am given the details, to ask Ambulance Victoria to correspond with the member and provide a full accounting of what occurred there. But my advice—and I have communicated this to the member for Brighton in these terms just in the last couple of days because I committed to doing so in the last sitting week. He wrote me a note afterwards, and I got a response for him from Ambulance Victoria. Their advice, and I stand to be corrected, but my memory of the letter, having signed it just yesterday, was that Ambulance Victoria confirmed that they do not send taxis to people who are deemed via their ProQA system, their classification system, as an emergency case. There are, however, a number of people—this would be more in metropolitan Melbourne than in regional Victoria—who are not urgent but are less than that. They are still in need of some transportation to get somewhere else, whether it be to a hospital or a GP or whatever it might be—a primary care setting, for instance. That may or may not relate to the circumstances that the member has raised, and I am happy to follow that up. But that is the advice I have from AV, and that is as recent as, I think, just a day or two ago given that I wrote to the member for Brighton in those terms.

Again, if the member provides me with the details, I am more than happy to follow it up on her behalf and on that person’s behalf. If there has been any sense that the system did not work well for that family, I apologise. I would also make the point that our ambulance paramedics right throughout Victoria, not just in metropolitan Melbourne, not just in big regional centres, but in every part of our community, every part of our state—there are more of them—are working extremely hard. They have done an amazing job so far. We continue to back them to do even more and even better, and I genuinely thank each and every one of them and, can I say, their families, because this is a very impactful, often very stressful, very demanding and can be a very tragic profession to be in. They see and are involved in and do things that many of us simply would not be able to do, that sort of work. So I thank them and I thank their families, and I commit to the honourable member that if she provides me with the details, I will follow that up. That is not the advice I have as recently as two days ago, but I am happy to follow it up and get a more contemporary response if such a thing can be produced for the member.

Ms McLEISH (Eildon) (14:38): The case has been referred to the minister for an explanation. Can the Premier ensure that Bradley and his wife will therefore get a full response from the government as to why there were no ambulances available in the middle of the day and why a taxi is considered an acceptable alternative by this government to an ambulance in an emergency?

Mr ANDREWS (Mulgrave—Premier) (14:38): I am not entirely certain that the member has listened to literally a word, a syllable, of what I just said. Again, the substantive question had a bunch of assumptions in it and the supplementary most certainly does. I will just refer, given that those opposite are pretty good at trawling through Hansard—go back and have a look at what you did not listen to when it is printed out tomorrow. I will respond in the terms I have just outlined, and if there is any further information that needs to be provided to us to follow this up—more than happy to do it. Ambulance Victoria are doing the very best they can with a lot more funding and support than was ever provided by those opposite. They are doing an amazing job, and I thank each and every one of them. I thank their families for the sacrifice that they make, for all the work they have done and all that they will do, because they have the strong support of this government. That is what saves lives and changes lives, even in the most difficult of circumstances.