Wednesday, 19 February 2025

 Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (18:33): (1434) My adjournment matter this evening is for the attention of the Minister for Health. There were 680 code blacks last financial year in our hospitals. Code blacks are the most serious violent issues that happen in our hospitals. They can be anything from threatening staff with knives to choking to throwing equipment. There has been even more aggression reported. It is happening at a frequency of every 12.8 hours – armed or serious threats every 12.8 hours. That is inexcusable. It is unacceptable in every way, and still the government have not been able to deal with this issue, even though they come in here and say they are tough on this and they are tough on that and they are not accepting this. They do nothing. They just talk about it, and they do absolutely nothing.

Nick McGowan interjected.

Georgie CROZIER: They did not want PSOs, Mr McGowan, that is right. They called them ‘plastic police’. They do a brilliant job. We had a doctor murdered just a few years ago after being attacked outside Box Hill Hospital. This level of violence and aggression cannot be tolerated. In an article that was provided over the summer break, where this was really highlighted, the health department consistently refused to release the data to the journalist. They finally got the data. The department tried to block the release for several months, and the data showed that some patients were automatically a code black and had to be acted upon.

The point here is that this should not be happening, and the government should be up-front about what is actually happening in our hospitals. We have seen with the antisemitism the appalling lack of leadership. We have seen the lack of leadership in addressing this very serious issue, and the government collates some information on these serious incidents but not all. So the action I am asking for is that the minister instruct the Department of Health to collate this important data and in the interests of transparency that it be published on the department’s website every month so that we can actually understand what is happening in our hospitals, what is happening with these violent threats against staff and patients, so that we can get a handle on it and action can then be finally taken.