Wednesday, 4 February 2026

 Mary-Anne THOMAS (Macedon – Leader of the House, Minister for Health, Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Women) (14:29): I rise to update the house on Victoria’s world-class ambulance service. On this side of the house we respect our ambos and the work that they do every single day. It is why we have grown our on-road workforce by more than 50 per cent and why we have invested an additional $2 billion into our ambulance services. The Productivity Commission, I am proud to report, confirms what Victorians already know: Victoria has better ambulance response times than Queensland or New South Wales; patient satisfaction with our ambulance services is the best in the nation; where resuscitation is attempted, we have the best cardiac survival rates of any jurisdiction, and indeed we are amongst the top three in the world; and our ambos of course, because we respect them, have amongst the best pay and conditions of any paramedic service here in Australia.

Of course we are also investing in initiatives that will get our paramedics back on the road sooner, and this includes the standards for timely and safe ambulance and emergency care. We have backed in the standards with a more than $58 million investment, which has already freed up more than 4000 ‍paramedic shifts and improved transfer times by 13.7 per cent. We have invested in these initiatives because only Labor supports and backs in our paramedics and quite frankly only Labor understands how our healthcare system operates here in Victoria and indeed what it is that our paramedics do. We know that when our paramedics are out on the road that is where they are delivering their life-saving work. They are out meeting people in the community to deliver care. They are not sitting around in branches waiting for members of the opposition to show up for selfies. Our paramedics – (Time expired)