Wednesday, 26 August 2026

 Roma BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (19:03): (1799) My adjournment matter is to the Minister for Health, and the action I seek is for the minister to come to Portland to meet with Portland District Health and the community about the funded plan needed to restore the essential services Portland has lost and secure the workforce required to keep them there. Portland is a healthcare desert. Rural Workforce Agency Victoria (RWAV) has identified Portland as one of 16 priority locations across rural Victoria, communities where workforce shortages, service access challenges and the community’s need are most acute. This is not the opposition saying it. It is not political rhetoric. This is what the Victorian rural health workforce census findings showed, and what it exposed is alarming. Across rural Victoria the census identified staff shortages as the leading healthcare system issue. It identified long specialist wait times and mental health services as under-served. Alarmingly, it also found health professionals were considering leaving their rural healthcare roles because they felt unsupported and burnt out.

Portland’s inclusion as one of the 16 priority communities should be a flashing red warning light for this government. People in Portland are not asking for gold-plated health care. They are not asking for brain surgery or heart transplants to be performed at their local hospital. They are asking for at least the basics. A tonsillectomy should be able to be performed locally. Basic ophthalmology services should be accessible. Podiatry should not be uncertain. Women should be able to have the confidence that when they become pregnant they can give birth at their local hospital. When somebody calls for an ambulance, they should be confident that one will actually be available. A child having to wait 2½ ‍years to have their tonsils out, risking sepsis and even death, is simply unbelievable in 2026. Having no ENT specialists for several hours from Portland is unacceptable. How did we get to this point when these things can no longer be taken for granted? This was highlighted in the 2017 parliamentary inquiry, which warned the government what a failure to act on the looming crisis would look like. And here we are.

And then there is the Hillis report. Health care in Portland increasingly resembles a road where this government has removed one bridge after another and then tells the community the road is still open. After more than a decade of this Labor government, services have been allowed to erode while the people still working in the system carry an enormous burden. The RWAV report warns that recruitment alone will not solve this. It calls for sustainable careers, workforce support and practical solutions to retention. Minister, Portland has now been officially identified as one of Victoria’s areas of greatest workforce pressure. Portland deserves more than another review. No more excuses. There is a problem. It deserves action.