Thursday, 13 November 2025

 Annabelle CLEELAND (Euroa) (19:04): (1401) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Health, and the action I seek is for the minister to fund the Royal Flying Doctor Service volunteer community transport program and to strengthen non-urgent patient transport across regional Victoria. Across my electorate I continue to hear distressing stories from people who simply cannot reach the medical care they need. These are locals already managing serious illness who are now carrying the added stress of figuring out how to get to treatment safely and affordably.

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Belinda from Alex travels to Seymour three times a week for dialysis. She recently waited an hour and a half for a vehicle that never arrived and was left to pay $183 for a taxi home. Victor from Shepparton and Boyd from Seymour relied on subsidised transport for their dialysis, but lost that support after the government tightened eligibility rules. These are not isolated stories. They are becoming far too common across our region. In Benalla, the largest regional town in Victoria without a dialysis chair, patients must travel to Wangaratta and Shepparton several times a week just to receive essential treatment. For many, transport was the only way they could manage those trips and now it is unreliable, unaffordable or even not available at all. These pressures are only made worse in communities like Benalla, where services simply do not exist, forcing people to travel even further and absorb higher costs on top of the emotional and physical load of illness.

This is not only a transport issue. It goes to fairness, dignity and basic access to health care. A recent report by my Parliament intern Flynn Healey from the Australian Christian College found that every licensed non-urgent patient transport provider in Victoria is based in Melbourne. Not one operates in regional Victoria. That leaves country patients completely dependent on Ambulance Victoria, which last year met its 15-minute emergency target only 36 per cent of the time, with even poorer outcomes across regional Victoria. When non-urgent trips spill over to Ambulance Victoria, local crews are pulled away from time-critical emergencies. It is not safe and it is certainly not sustainable.

At the same time, we have a model that works: the Royal Flying Doctor Service volunteer community transport program has been a lifeline for older residents and for people who fall through the gaps of non-emergency patient transport, the Victorian patient transport assistance scheme and the NDIS. Clients say it has made it easier to reach care. It supports small hospitals, eases pressure on overstretched ambulances and strengthens local communities. The program will lose its Commonwealth funding at the end of this year. Without it, those 22,000 annual trips to health appointments will vanish, leaving vulnerable Victorians with no safe way to reach treatment. The RFDS has put forward a clear, cost-effective proposal to maintain current sites and expand a statewide service. Their model is reliable, respectful and provides true equity for regional Victorians. I want to thank Flynn for his thorough and compassionate work, which has shone a light on the real consequences of decisions made in this place. I urge support of the Royal Flying Doctors volunteer transport program, because regional Victorians already travel further, pay more and wait longer.