Wednesday, 18 February 2026

 Mary-Anne THOMAS (Macedon – Leader of the House, Minister for Health, Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Women) (14:13): On the day that we have opened the largest health infrastructure project that Victoria has ever seen, I rise to update the house on the Allan Labor government’s delivery of thousands of good, secure jobs in our healthcare sector. As a Labor government we are focused on creating jobs in health care – jobs that Victorians can rely on. We have grown our healthcare workforce by more than 50 per cent, and what that means is we have got more than 17,000 additional nurses in our healthcare system, we have got more than 7500 additional doctors in our system and thousands more cooks, cleaners, patient services assistants and theatre techs, as well as allied health professionals.

You only get to create good, secure jobs like this if you build the hospitals for them to work in. Footscray Hospital opened at 8 am today, and by 6 pm tonight 180 patients will have been transferred from the old hospital to the new, with 4500 staff working around the clock to ensure that safe transfer. We were so proud to be there this morning – the Premier, the Minister for Health Infrastructure and the member for Footscray – to meet those hardworking healthcare workers, and now we have a world-class facility that matches the world-class care that they deliver every single day. Of course this is just one of 11 new hospitals that our government has delivered right across the state – in Frankston, in Maryborough, in Mernda, in Cranbourne and in Phillip Island.

You cannot build these hospitals and fill them with healthcare workers if you have got an $11.1 billion budget black hole. The choice for Victorians could not be clearer: a government that backs workers and employs an additional 17,000 nurses or a rabble on that side that want to sack 17,000 nurses to fill their budget black hole. Victorians know that when it comes to health care Labor will always be on their side.