Wednesday, 17 August 2022

 Mr QUILTY (Northern Victoria) (12:54): (1921) The government’s ambulance response time report cards are out. Once again for Northern Victoria the mark is ‘Fail’. Ambulance Victoria’s target is to respond to 85 per cent of code 1 incidents within 15 minutes. In Indigo shire they managed just 20.6 per cent—once again the worst in the state; in Buloke, 33.6 per cent; and in Loddon shire, just 27.4 per cent. Towong shire dropped from 45.2 per cent of responses within 15 minutes to 31.5 per cent with the exact same number of call-outs over the last 12 months. Right across Northern Victoria the response times are under 50 per cent, compared to Melbourne, which is having a crisis, with a 76 per cent response rate. The people of Northern Victoria understand that it is harder to deliver services in the region. We do not expect to have Melbourne levels of services everywhere, but it appears that for this government Northern Victoria is too far away from Melbourne to bother about at all. Minister, when will Northern Victorians in life-threatening situations be able to call an ambulance with confidence that it will arrive in time? Northern Victorian lives matter.