Tuesday, 28 October 2025

 Roma BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (01:59): (1366) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Health and Minister for Ambulance Services, and the action I seek is urgent clarification on the future of the paramedic practitioner program and specifically whether the government intends to continue funding the program and restricting these highly trained professionals to working solely with Ambulance Victoria. Once again, I rise with deep frustration on behalf of the people of South-West Coast, who are watching their health service disappear by stealth. Our communities are suffering, our doctors are overwhelmed, new residents cannot get a GP and even newborn babies are being turned away from clinics because there simply are not enough practitioners. That is how overstretched the system is. This paramedic practitioner program was promised, heralded in fact, by the Premier and the minister as a solution for the crisis in emergency departments and primary care. Legislation was introduced to allow paramedics to undertake advanced training so they could prescribe, suture, perform procedures and provide vital care that would keep people out of emergency departments and doctors clinics.

But now, in deeply troubling news, I have been advised that the Department of Health has paused or effectively defunded the project – another Labor broken promise, another rug pulled out from under the hardworking professionals who have been studying, training and preparing to serve their communities. And it gets worse: the department’s drugs and poisons section are acting against the advice of their own expert panel. They are proposing to restrict paramedic practitioners to Ambulance Victoria only, claiming that practitioners can only work safely within that organisation. That is deeply insulting to our general practitioners, hospitals, nurses, pharmacists and general health organisations who need these extra skill sets. So why has the government defunded the program, and why have they shackled paramedics to a single employer by legislation? No other registered health professional is treated this way. Why are paramedics being singled out?

The list of Allan Labor government betrayals does not end there. We have seen the closure of the Portland helipad, cutting off a vital emergency lifeline for our region, a cut to a health service. We have seen cuts to the Warrnambool hospital, shrinking what should have been a flagship regional facility – no new pathology, cuts to other essential medical facilities and no associated improvements for car parking, catering or administration. We have seen delays and stalling on the promised drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre in Warrnambool, despite the urgent need for support services, and we are still waiting for the PET scanner, a critical diagnostic tool promised in 2022. It is now 2025, and if we are lucky we might see it by 2027 – if you believe what Labor says. This is not just mismanagement, it is hoodwinking, trickery and deception by the Allan Labor government. Something here is horribly wrong. This is a pattern – a pattern of neglect, a pattern of broken promises, a pattern of treating regional Victorians as second-class citizens.