Wednesday, 9 February 2022

Committees

Legal and Social Issues Committee

Reference

Dr CUMMING (Western Metropolitan) (11:32): I move:

That this house requires the Legal and Social Issues Committee to inquire into, consider and report, by no later than 1 July 2022, on the effects of COVID-19 on the physical and mental health of Victorians, including but not limited to:

(1) the provision of mental health services;

(2) the number of suicides;

(3) the number and type of presentations at:

(a) hospitals;

(b) general and allied health practitioners;

(c) pathology services;

(d) diagnostic services;

(4) the effects of delays in surgery and diagnostic services, if any, to the Victorian health system and to the health of Victorians;

(5) the health and learning impacts of school closures on children; and

(6) any other matter the committee considers relevant.

I rise today to speak to my motion, which is motion 692. We all know that COVID has affected the physical and mental health of Victorians, but what we do not know is exactly how much it has affected them and what the effects on our health system will be as we continue to recover. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has reported a rise in the use of mental health services and an increase in psychological distress. Lifeline had their busiest three days in their 57-year history in August last year. They had seen an increase of 32 per cent in the calls that they had received in Victoria compared to two years ago. A survey commissioned by Suicide Prevention Australia showed that 15 per cent of people directly knew someone who had attempted or died by suicide in the last year. One in four knew or knew of someone who had tried to or had taken their own life in the past year.

But it is not just adults; our children are suffering as well. We have GPs telling us that four out of five young patients between the ages of 10 and 18 are coming in with mental health problems. The majority are depressed and are talking about suicide and self-harm. Many psychologists have closed their books and are not taking any new patients. Waiting lists are for months and months. And according to the latest Coroners Court data, eight girls under the age of 18 died by suicide between January and July last year, compared to only one in the same period the previous year and three the year before that.

Two parents contacted my office, both of them having lost their teenagers to suicide in the previous week. Tragically these are not the only suicides that I know. My children have lost friends in the past year, and friends of mine have lost their children. According to a report in the Australian, hospitalisations of young people for mental health emergencies are up by 57 per cent in the last year in Victoria. Kids Helpline recorded 30 per cent more calls in the first six months of 2021 compared to the same period of 2020. Professor McGorry is warning of a shadow pandemic stemming from the mental health issues of younger Australians.

Then there are the effects on our physical health. We have yet to know the effects that the delays in dental services, the delays in diagnostic services and the delays in surgery are going to have on all Victorians. Patients are getting sicker while they are put off seeing doctors or accessing diagnostic services. Modellers in the UK estimate the excess of cancer deaths is going to be way higher than COVID deaths. With a lower COVID death rate in Australia, our levels of cancer deaths could be even more marked. Researchers at the University of Melbourne, the Royal Melbourne Hospital, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute have predicted the most significant impact to be from melanoma, followed by lung cancer, breast cancer and bowel cancer. They said:

A six-month delay in cancer diagnosis and treatment is estimated to result in nearly 350 deaths and cost the Australian healthcare system $46 million.

A reduction in the number of breast cancer diagnoses has been reported nationally and internationally during COVID, especially in the lockdowns. People are not coming forward with signs and symptoms that could indicate cancer. Some are reluctant to attend clinics for the fear that the government has created. Patients were frightened, especially older patients and those with existing health conditions. Screening programs had reduced accessibility and activity. One Melbourne breast cancer surgeon reported her referrals down 70 per cent during the second lockdown. For patients with cancer, delaying surgery has the real potential for some patients’ tumours progressing from being curable to not curable. We have had delays to surgery across the board. It has been stopped, starting at 50 per cent capacity, stopping again, then only in private hospitals—you can watch the media consistently for updates.

We currently have nearly 81 000 patients waiting for elective surgery. Nearly 2000 of those are urgent, requiring surgery within 30 days. Waiting time figures are not available, but we do know that you have to wait for an average of 25 days for a coronary artery bypass graft. That has been steadily increasing since COVID, and we know emergency departments have been pushed to their limits, as have ambulances. The president of the AMA has said that he is reasonably confident that every COVID patient that needs an ICU bed or ventilator will get one, but he said also he was not seeing any preparation to continue normal health care at the same time. He is more than worried about all the other health care that has been stopped or pushed aside in order to look after COVID patients. Only last week a Productivity Commission report showed that we spend less money per person running public hospitals than any other state in the country, with fewer beds, fewer staff and longer waiting times in emergency departments, and only 62 per cent of Victorian patients in the second most serious emergency category were seen on time, compared to 79 per cent in New South Wales or 71 per cent for the national average as a whole.

We need to have access, and we need to know the toll that COVID has had on the health of all Victorians. By conducting this inquiry we can have access to that toll as well as the demand on our health system going forward. It will allow us to listen to practitioners across the health sector, to hear their views and to see the effect the last 18 months has had on them and their patients. This gives them parliamentary privilege when at times they are feeling that, if they come forward, they may lose their registration under the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency. For them to be able to come to this inquiry and to be able to have that parliamentary privilege is very important.

The government will tell us that the new Pandemic Declaration Accountability and Oversight Committee will be able to do everything that I want this inquiry to do. Let me be blunt: it cannot. That committee cannot investigate or even question anything that happened in 2020 or 2021 under the state of emergency. It has no retrospective powers. A lot of this information is probably out there, but it needs to be pulled together. We need this inquiry to provide us with critical information that will allow us to plan a way forward and to ensure that the financial resources are properly allocated, and we need it before we head into the next winter.

I want to make this clear to others on the crossbench: obviously what I have heard from the government is that they are not going to support this inquiry. They are putting out misinformation that the current pandemic oversight committee can do everything that I am requesting.

Members interjecting.

Dr CUMMING: No, it cannot, and the reason why the committee cannot is that it has been established under legislation and it can only be changed by legislation and a legislative amendment, so they are unable to change the scope of the committee. So if anyone comes in here today and actually says that the current pandemic oversight committee can do what I am requesting in this inquiry, they are wrong and they will be lying to the broader community and to themselves. We all know that the broader community has been wanting a royal commission. We cannot do that, but we can do this inquiry.

The other excuse that I have heard around why we cannot do this inquiry at this time is that that committee is full. Well, it would seem that the chair of this committee was able to put a self-referral for a far-right inquiry. Is the rise of the far right more important to the Victorian community than what has been going on in the pandemic in the last two years? Is it? Is this the government’s priority—not actually to have an inquiry into what has gone on which we can learn from?

And I will say this to the chair of that committee. She has said this before: ‘I can’t have a particular inquiry because the committee is busy’. But, guess what, a couple of months later, or even, I would not be surprised, next week or the next sitting week, someone will request an inquiry and it will be put onto the committee. So it is about priorities. When we had the contact-tracing and tracking inquiry it was most beneficial. It is probably one of the only real inquiries that we have had around the pandemic and health that has been referred to a committee to actually have outcomes that we could benefit from during this pandemic.

A member interjected.

Dr CUMMING: Well, that is the distinct problem here. The community has been crying out for the public health advice. They want to see it. We all believe that the public health advice has been verbal. There is not any. There is nothing there, and the government has been making it up as it goes along. The Premier believes that every presser is the public health advice. Now, is the community happy with that? Or do they actually want an inquiry where they as the community can come out and actually put forward their lived experience and put in a submission to the inquiry? Or doctors and nurses could actually come forward and put in a submission, or members of Parliament could be called upon, such as the previous health minister. She could come here to this inquiry and actually put forward evidence under parliamentary privilege. Is that what the government is scared of?

Now, we also know that there are many things that this government has not spoken about that the community would like to bring up in this inquiry—things around stopping surgeries and elective surgeries but also having the information for why they could not visit their elderly family members, why they could not go to a funeral, why they could not cross a border, why we are being mandated to have vaccines or why children are wearing masks in schools. Why haven’t we had COVID-ready kits? Other places around the world have actually given people COVID-ready kits so they can actually take something while they are suffering from COVID at home. Why haven’t we had any preventative services? Why haven’t people had those services at home? It would be great to hear from the community’s lived experience through COVID and sitting at home with COVID and what we could learn from that to make it better. I know that many in the community who have had COVID have been not happy with the services that have been provided or have had no contact from the department. We could actually then allow for the vaccine injured to come forward and to actually show the Parliament the adverse reactions. Our dental services—people could actually come forward to show what the delays are and what has actually happened. So I am not sure why the government feel that they cannot allow the community and other practitioners to come forward and why they would not support this inquiry. You would believe that they would want to have this inquiry prior to the possible next variant, possibly before next winter.

This is timely. I have had it on the agenda in different forms for the last 12 months. For 12 months I have wanted an inquiry into COVID. This is what the community demands. They want to see the public health advice, they want to see written public health advice. They want to see what makes up the daily Dans, and they want to know why it is contradicting other health advice. Why are we going down a path of requiring three vaccinations before you can work? Why can you come into Australia with two vaccinations but not get into Victoria? Those little things—micromanaging this pandemic the way that the government has rather than allowing the community to make their own health choices, recommending rather than mandating. These are the problems that are going to continue to cripple our health system. Why is it that from 15 October all of the health workers that were working through the pandemic without vaccinations could not work?

The pandemic has hurt nearly every industry. We have crippled every business due to the mandating, and we will continue to cripple business when other parts of the world are getting on with life. The UK and Denmark have dropped all mandates, and they have allowed the community to live with COVID. We were told that once we got to 90 per cent vaccination we would be allowed to live with COVID, but the government continues to move the goalposts—and the community wants to know why. They want to know why, when the government says one thing and they have done the right thing—they have got themselves fully vaccinated—we cannot just live with COVID. Do not let me start about rapid tests and throwing members of Parliament out of this place and COVID passports. Let us hope that the government has a change of heart and let us hope that the crossbench here do not come up with the government’s excuses for why we cannot have an inquiry.

Dr KIEU (South Eastern Metropolitan) (11:52): I rise to speak to the motion put by Dr Cumming. At the outset as a government we do not support the motion. But may I begin by acknowledging that we are still in the midst of a pandemic, and I want to take this opportunity to thank all the medical staff, the public health officers, the ambulance officers and particularly the Victorian public for their sacrifice and resilience for the last two years with the challenging situation that we are all in, the global pandemic.

As a government we make no apologies for keeping the Victorian community safe. The government continues to follow the science and the expertise of our public health team, including those of the chief health officer, to keep our community safe and to get out of this pandemic. As we all remember, last year, 2021, we the government introduced new pandemic-specific legislation that provides a framework to ensure that Victoria can effectively manage the global pandemic and also manage any future pandemics which may—who knows?—be coming in the future. Under this new legislation the state of emergency in Victoria is no longer required for managing the global pandemic. On 15 December 2021 a pandemic declaration made by the Premier took effect when the state of emergency ended, and this current pandemic declaration will expire at 1 minute to midnight on 12 April—in about two months time.

Now, the responsibility is on the minister, who has considered and will consider not only the health factors impacting on the lives and the health of Victorians but also the non-health factors, including social, economic and mental wellbeing, in order to issue any pandemic orders. Since the new arrangements the minister has issued 42 pandemic orders. This includes the new ones, the changes and the renewal of orders in order to keep our public health and wellbeing safe and sound and keep our public health system functioning. These orders are published online within seven days of the order being signed by the minister—not only the orders but also the chief health officer’s advice. Also accompanying those are the minister’s reasons for making changes to orders and a summary of the human rights assessment in issuing these orders.

These arrangements are the most transparent and accountable in Australia and provide Victoria with certainty that we can continue to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. The measures of transparency and accountability include the joint parliamentary investigative committee which will have parliamentary oversight of any pandemic orders and also the Independent Pandemic Management Advisory Committee, which is able to review pandemic orders and provide advice to the Minister for Health. The parliamentary committee may also report to either house or both houses of the Parliament if it is considering a pandemic order or an instrument that expands or varies or revokes an order that does not appear to be within the power of the minister as conferred by the act, is without clear and express authority conferred by the act or is incompatible with the human rights set out by the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities. The parliamentary committee may make recommendations it considers appropriate, including that an order be disallowed, after it has considered advice from the Independent Pandemic Management Advisory Committee.

During the pandemic, for the last two years and ongoing, there have been many concerns about the impact on the mental health of the public. It is noted that the pandemic is a global one and also an unprecedented and very difficult and challenging event which has impacted across our state. Victorians have increased their use of crisis and support lines substantially during the pandemic. Victorians have also used more Medicare benefits—scheduled mental health items—than other states or territories. We were pleased to see the commonwealth government expand the allowance for mental health plans and subsidised psychological support for Victorians during the pandemic, and we will advocate for the continuation of this expanded program. Indeed we will continue to press for its permanence in light of the ongoing mental health impact of the pandemic. Mental health presentations at emergency departments as a proportion of all emergency presentations were also up during the pandemic.

Business interrupted pursuant to sessional orders.