Tuesday, 8 September 2026

 Peter WALSH (Murray Plains) (19:00): (1819) My adjournment issue is for the Minister for Health, and the action I seek is for the minister to immediately lift the Victorian patient transport assistance scheme travel and accommodation subsidies to be comparative with the national levels. In 2026 the Australian patient travel subsidy scorecard put Victoria dead last, an appalling indictment on a Labor government which boasts about the strength and fairness of its health system. Under VPTAS, accommodation assistance is just $49.50 a night, and I challenge the minister to find decent accommodation close to a major Melbourne hospital for $49.50 a night. A regional Victorian driving hundreds of kilometres for cancer treatment gets 21 cents per kilometre, the lowest rate in Australia. These are not people taking holidays or choosing to drive to Melbourne for a weekend away. They are cancer patients, people with serious and sometimes life-threatening illnesses, parents taking sick children to specialists and carers putting their lives on hold to support someone they love. Because they live in regional Victoria, this government expects them to shoulder costs that metropolitan patients simply do not face. It is no wonder the Leukaemia Foundation and 19 other organisations are calling for urgent reform. Your postcode should not determine how much it costs you to stay alive. Therefore I urge the minister to please lift the VPTAS travel and accommodation subsidies to be comparative with the rest of Australia.