Tuesday, 10 September 2024

Health funding

Richard WELCH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:03): (1116) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Health. The severe financial mismanagement of the Allan Labor government continues to jeopardise our health system and the wellbeing of Victorians. Recent documents reveal that the health minister Mary-Anne Thomas was forced to scramble for an urgent $422 million cash bailout for the state’s hospitals at the end of the 2022–23 financial year. This desperate plea bypassed the cabinet, highlighting the chaotic state of healthcare funding under this government. More than 20 health services were forecast to end the financial year in the red, with major hospitals like the Royal Melbourne Hospital and the Austin Hospital facing deficits of $100 million and $50 million respectively. The Allan Labor government’s belated provision of an additional $1.5 billion in hospital funding has not resolved the ongoing crisis, with warnings of job losses, bed closures and delays in essential services like surgery and breast screening continuing to plague our healthcare system.

It is a dire condemnation of this government that Victorians have to worry about whether or not their local hospitals can afford to keep their doors open and their staff paid. It is a dire condemnation of the management of the health service that any health organisation cannot have reliable cash flow in place to pay doctors’ and nurses’ salaries. The action I seek from the minister is to provide a clear timetable by which we will be out of this health crisis and the measures that have been taken to ensure MICA coverage is reliable, but most particularly, to explain how cash flow management of organisations under her purview can be short of salaries at the end of any pay period.