Tuesday, 6 February 2024

Health system

Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (14:06): Last week’s data from the Productivity Commission’s Report on Government Services paints a bleak picture for Victoria’s health system. Despite spending the second-highest amount in Australia on public health services, the data shows Victorians are not receiving what they are paying for. Furthermore, Victoria has the unenviable position of having the most sentinel events of any Australian jurisdiction. In addition, last week’s Victorian Agency for Health Information data also showed little improvement for tens of thousands of Victorians who remain languishing on vital surgery waitlists. Yet today we have another media report on Labor’s health tax, a tax that will be adding costs of up to 30 per cent for Victorians to see a doctor, with one in six clinics likely to close. These are really concerning statistics, and again the government refuses to listen. What do the millions of Victorians do, then? They either delay their care and get sicker, or they flood into our already overstretched emergency departments. This insidious tax must stop, and again I call on the government to understand the real-life impacts of their tax grab, a tax grab that they are doing because the state is broke.