Constituency questions
Eastern Metropolitan Region
Dr BACH (Eastern Metropolitan) (12:39): (1935) My constituency question is for the Minister for Health in the other place, and it concerns the ongoing crisis at Box Hill Hospital in my electorate. My question to the minister is this: will she urgently meet with the senior leadership at Box Hill Hospital in order to ensure that they have the significant additional resources that they need to deal with the crisis they are facing and in particular to get rid of that stupid tent in the car park? As the house knows—as I have informed the house—I was at Box Hill Hospital with the CEO just a week and a half ago, and it was very instructive to have a tour of that facility and in particular to have a look at that tent. It is stupid. It is better to be in a tent in a car park than to be in an ambulance ramped in a car park. But, as so many health experts and paramedics have said over the last few days, it is no substitute—indeed it is a Third World substitute—for being in an emergency department and being in a hospital bed. But because of years and years of underfunding and mismanagement from the Andrews Labor government, this is what we see in Victoria in 2022.