Tuesday, 2 May 2023

Health system

Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (14:58): Well, the health data that has come out is nothing for this government to be proud of. It is incredibly disappointing that despite Victoria operating the most expensive ambulance service in Australia, one in three Victorians who need an emergency response through their ambulance are not being met through the response times. The code 1 response is not being met by the government’s own targets. This is really concerning when you think that a third of patients who need that emergency service just cannot get an ambulance when they should. And we have got other statistics from the health data, whether that is the number of Victorians on the elective surgery waitlist who need vital surgery – nearly 79,000. Twenty-five per cent of those are not being seen within the clinically recommended time, and 21 per cent of children who need surgery and treatment at the Royal Children’s Hospital have to wait for over a year. These figures are damning.

There is a lot more I would like to say on this and on the dental wait times for children with caries – the wait times for them have blown out. There are so many issues within this health data today that the government has released, and it demonstrates that our health system remains in crisis – that too many Victorians are waiting in pain. They cannot get an ambulance when they need one, and they are continuing to suffer because of the government’s inaction to fix the health crisis.