Wednesday, 31 August 2022

Mordialloc electorate health services

Mr RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (09:48): It was great to join recently the Minister for Health and Minister for Ambulance Services to visit paramedics in the Mordialloc electorate and hear of the outstanding work and commitment that they have shown over the last few years. They are an extraordinary bunch at the Mordialloc ambulance branch, and we give them a big shout-out. They know that the Andrews Labor government backs and supports them. Hundreds more paramedics have been recruited. We do not go to war with our paramedics; we support them in their work, we empower them, we have funded resources and we have funded them to build for the future.

Then we went down the road to Parkdale, where we visited the Central Bayside Community Health Services. Of course that was the site of the old Mordialloc hospital. What was it before Kennett came to government? It was a hospital, and then it was closed. It took the community to save it and make it a community health service for the future.

We are investing $2.7 million to upgrade Central Bayside Community Health Services, providing a range of different services—GP, NDIS and dental services—to our local community. It is about investing in health, from our hospitals, with upgrades at Frankston Hospital—we have seen upgrades at Monash, Dandenong, and we are supporting all of our local health services—all the way down to the grassroots, where our paramedics are being supported each and every day. Labor backs our health system, we support our paramedics and we support our nurses. There are another 7000 health workers on the way, and 5000 of those will be nurses. This adds to more than 22 000 health workers, and guess what—10 000 more people can be nurses as we pay for their degrees into the future.