Wednesday, 13 August 2025

Motions

Health system

Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (15:47): I am pleased to be able to rise and speak to motion 1023 in my name. It is an issue that I have raised on many occasions around elective surgery waiting lists and the latest Victorian Agency for Health Information (VAHI) data, which also includes ambulance response times, dental waitlists and specialist waitlists, and this is essentially what this motion goes to. I move:

That this house notes that:

(1) too many Victorians continue to suffer because of the Allan Labor government’s failure to deliver basic health services, as the latest Victorian Agency for Health Information quarterly data released on 7 August 2025 reveals:

(a) there are 58,627 Victorians on the waiting list for vital surgery;

(b) ambulance response times remain well below the government’s own target, with the benchmark of 15 minutes to respond to urgent code 1 cases only met 65.3 per cent of the time;

(c) at Box Hill Hospital, only 47 per cent of patients are being transferred to the emergency department within the recommended timeframe;

(d) wait times for specialist appointments have increased in the last quarter;

(e) wait times for dental appointments have increased in the last quarter; and

(2) in 2022, Labor promised to deliver 240,000 surgeries a year and when they failed to meet this number, they simply revised it downwards.

I read that in because there are issues around the numbers of Victorians waiting on the waitlist to get their surgery. It might be semiurgent surgery or it might be other surgery that they have been waiting for years, and in today’s Auditor-General’s report that is exactly what we have found. The Auditor’s report Planned Surgery in Victoria, August 2025, shows a whole range of failures by the government. What they were doing is they were looking at two lines of inquiry: did the Department of Health deliver all elements of the COVID catch-up plan, and were the plan’s outcomes achieved? In this report, if you read it, page after page it really says that the government did not meet their own targets, they did not meet their own plans – there were problems the whole way through. One of the things that I was particularly concerned about is that:

The department told us that as at May 2025 there were 583 March 2022 long waiter cohort patients waiting for surgery.

So you have got this list. But it also talks about those hospitals that are not included in this because they are not in the elective surgery information system. I want to draw attention to something that I have raised on many occasions. In this Victorian Auditor-General’s Office (VAGO) report it talks about the number of health services that do provide ESIS data but also the dozens of hospitals that do not – that are still not included. I have raised this for years in the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee (PAEC). In 2022–23 I asked about this very issue, and the response was, ‘It’s coming on in time.’ In fact it was a question asked by Mr Danny O’Brien, and the then department secretary’s response was:

Part of the planned surgery recovery reform program is to progressively make those non-ESIS lists visible, and so we will add them to ESIS.

That was from the inquiry into the 2021–22 and 2022–23 financial and performance outcomes from 24 November. In the PAEC of 2024–25 I asked again about this, and the then department secretary said, ‘I think we discussed this last year,’ which was true, and again it was said, ‘It will be transparent and visible.’ Yet again this year in PAEC, Ms Benham asked about this very issue, because Mildura is not included in the waitlist for surgeries. She asked the minister – but made the point that we have asked this time and time again – when this would happen:

Well, we are expected to commence public reporting in the 2025–26 financial year or earlier if possible.

Well, we are here now, but in this Auditor-General’s report – not a bit of that. One of the recommendations from the Auditor was that this data be made public, for obvious reasons – we want to know how many people are actually waiting for surgery. It is thousands more than the nearly 59,000 reported by VAHI. But the government know that they have got a problem with this, and so they are not going to release it. The recommendation from VAGO is that the Department of Health:

Work with relevant health services to make sure all public planned surgeries delivered in Victoria are captured in the Elective Surgery Information System …

What is the government’s response? ‘The department agrees in principle, blah, blah, blah.’

Members interjecting.

Georgie CROZIER: Well, no, it is, because seriously, they say nothing. But the target completion date is 1 July 2028, so they have no intention of releasing that data for those hospitals, those dozens of hospitals. I think there are 34 health services that do not provide data, and some do have elective surgery – hospitals like Mildura, like Bairnsdale. The report says:

Twenty-three health services in Victoria use ESIS, including all major metropolitan health services.

A further 34 public health services deliver planned surgeries but do not use ESIS.

That is why I am saying these waitlists are just rubbery figures. They might be reported, but they are not the true figures, and that is what we have.

I want to also take note that when the latest data was released, when the minister was crowing about the response, there was nothing to crow or boast about, because the ambulance response times are still woefully under target. As I said, transfers in a particular hospital like Box Hill, where there have been significant issues, are woefully under target at just 47 per cent. We have got other areas that are hugely problematic. Specialist appointment times have blown out. Dental wait times have blown out. All of these areas have an impact on Victorians’ health and wellbeing.

There is one particular area that is so misleading. The government says that category 1 surgeries are all done within time – every marker says 100 per cent – and it is just not true. Again, we do not get the true picture. A couple of weeks ago there was a young woman, who I also have spoken with, that received a positive result from a take-home bowel cancer test in October of 2024 – that is October of last year. She had to wait for nine months before getting a colonoscopy. She had abdominal pain, and she was deemed by her GP to be a category 1 patient. A category 1 patient is meant to be seen within 30 days, yet she had to wait nine months, and it was only after the reporter who reported on this story, the journalist I was speaking to about it, phoned the hospital that she got bumped from 12 months to nine months. She was on a waitlist as a category 1 for 12 months, so understandably she is absolutely outraged that the minister has the audacity to say that all category 1 patients are being seen on time.

If you look at the VAHI data, especially around Werribee Mercy, where this was happening, the percentage of urgent category 1 patients treated within the recommended time of 30 days in April–‍June 2024 was 100 per cent; in July to September 2024 it was 100 per cent; and in October to December 2024 it was 100 per cent. The very timeframe that this woman falls within – well, it is just not true. January to March 2025, 100 per cent; April to June 2025, 100 per cent – these figures need to be accurate, because patients like Sherri are suffering. She was very anxious around that positive test, understandably. If you have a positive test or you have symptoms or your GP deems you to be category 1, you expect to be seen within that 30-day period. So that is why I remain very concerned around the data that is released and what is actually happening in our health services. How is that information being reported? How are they getting it so wrong when category 1 patients like this are told their wait is 12 months but their GP has said, ‘Please see this patient urgently. Given her positive bowel screen test and given the abdominal symptoms that she has, she is deemed to be category 1.’

There remain massive issues, and I remain very concerned, given the average overdue wait time for various categories. The category 3 wait time was 342 days – the recommended wait time is 12 months. The average overdue wait time for category 2 patients was 196 days, and the recommended wait time is 90 days. These figures are having a real impact, as I said, on the health and wellbeing of Victorians who are waiting to be seen, and of course we have no idea of those waiting on the hidden waitlist – those people waiting to get in to see a specialist who are then put onto a surgery waitlist. We have no idea of that, and we have no idea of the thousands of Victorians who are in areas like Mildura and Bairnsdale that are not included in this data because they are not captured by ESIS.

As I said at the outset, it has been promised by the government – by the former department secretary and the minister – that they will be reporting this year. The minister said in June of this year:

… we are expected to commence public reporting in the 2025–26 financial year or earlier if possible.

Yet this report says 2028 – that is three years away – and that is why I have enormous concerns around what is happening in our health services and within the department.

I go to point (b) of my motion:

ambulance response times remain well below the Government’s own target, with the benchmark of 15 minutes to respond to urgent Code 1 cases only met 65.3 per cent of the time …

That is so far under the target of 85 per cent. Every second counts in an emergency, and we have seen the tragedy where people are calling for ambulances, ambulances are ramped and cannot do what they need to do, paramedics cannot get to the patients they need to attend to and treat and care for because they are ramped and, sadly, we have seen patients die.

I have to say I was listening to question time today, and I heard the member for Ringwood ask an excellent question of the Minister for Health regarding an issue at Maroondah Hospital where paramedics had said there were just no staff in the system, so paramedics had to go in and actually treat the patients. The minister said that is under investigation and that Ambulance Victoria is undertaking that investigation. It is now August 2025. How long do these investigations take? This is a government that just kicks the can down the road and covers up the failures the whole time. People are dying because they cannot get the emergency care that they deserve. Somebody who rings 000 not once but twice with a head injury, bleeding, just minutes away from an emergency department dies because an ambulance does not turn up, because the ambulances are ramped at Box Hill. It just demonstrates the complete chaos and the extent of the issues within our health system. They are right throughout the health system.

This government might talk about record investment, but it is actually about how you manage the money and where the money goes – how you actually operate that money, what it is actually doing to make that difference and how you are looking at the system in its entirety. This government separated the ministerial responsibilities for ambulance services and health, and we had two ministers. It was just ridiculous. They do not even understand. They continue to work in silos so that they can continue to fudge what is going on. I mean, they changed that decision, thankfully, because it made no sense, but why did they do it in the first place? Because they play games.

It is actually really devastating to see the shocking state that we are in. I know that there are just so many issues in the system, and that is despite the extraordinary efforts by those that work within the system – the doctors, the nurses, the allied health professionals. That includes the physios, the pharmacists, the OTs – all of those people that work in community health or palliative care. They do an extraordinary job, but they are frustrated by this government’s inability to understand what is required to fix these problems. Again, for the minister to pat herself on the back and say, ‘This is a good result’ – this is not a good result. It is not a good result when wait times for specialist appointments have increased or that waiting times for dental appointments have increased in the last quarter to well over a year. This impacts people’s lives. It impacts their ability to go about their everyday lives, whether it is work or their family life or their health and wellbeing, as I said. We must do better.

Finally, in the last few minutes that I have, as VAGO also pointed out, in 2022 Labor promised to deliver 240,000 surgeries, but they could not meet that target, so they revised it down. This is what VAGO said:

The plan’s overarching target was to deliver 240,000 planned surgeries per year by June 2024.

That was last year.

This is 40,000 more than the public health system delivered in 2018–19 before the pandemic.

They could never meet those targets, but they made such a big song and dance about it, and when they could not meet it, they just revised it down. So now they are crowing, ‘Oh, we’ve gone over our targets.’ But you actually set those targets and failed to deliver on them. It went on:

The plan intended for this target to be ongoing each financial year. However, the government reduced it to 210,000 …

to align with previous years’ activity levels.

They really did overreach, and that was what the Auditor-General found. The overarching target could never be delivered. There were just so many other things that the Auditor-General found. What we found was ‘The system’s performance is unclear’ – that is a particular phrase – or ‘They did not fully meet the plan’s targets’ despite the department increasing the number of planned surgeries to reduce the waiting list. So you have got a lot of words from the department and you have got a lot of words from the minister and the government, but in actual fact these results are a very concerning given the investment of $1.5 billion with that COVID catch-up plan. That is a lot of money, and really we should be doing a lot better than reducing a waitlist by a couple of thousand people, because we know that they have not even dealt with those 582 people from 2022. They are still there.

I understand that there is much more to do, but I would urge the government to look at this data and be far more transparent than they are and get those 34 public health hospitals with their data. Do not wait for the amalgamations to occur – because that is all the government is doing, waiting for the amalgamations to occur when these health services will be just swallowed up. This is a cynical plan by the government so we never see the full transparency of the waitlist that I have been asking for for years. I say that this government knows that the waitlist for vital planned surgery is way, way above the nearly 58,627 Victorians – it is much bigger than that, and I think that is a massive failure by this government to not understand the needs of Victorians, both this year and in the previous five years.

Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (16:06): I am pleased to rise to speak on Ms Crozier’s motion about the performance of our healthcare system, particularly reflecting on the surgery waitlists. The Allan Labor government is backing our hospitals. It is backing our healthcare workforce. It is making sure that Victorians who need health care get access to it when they need it most. The most recent Victorian budget delivered an extra $11.1 billion into our healthcare system, including a record $9.3 billion boost for our hospitals, giving every public hospital the certainty to plan for the future and keep delivering the world-class care that Victorians rely upon. Every public health service in Victoria received a funding increase in the last budget. But to get to the point, the crux of the motion is: where is the money going? What is it delivering in terms of health outcomes? For the second consecutive year, our hardworking healthcare workforce delivered a record number of planned surgeries across the system. Between April and June this year, Victoria delivered a record-breaking 58,264 patients receiving planned surgery, the highest number of planned surgery patients treated in a quarter in Victoria’s history, contributing to an annual total of 212,705 planned surgeries, the highest ever 12-month total recorded in Victoria. The highest ever number of planned surgeries in a 12-month period delivered in this state was reported in the last 12 months. They are the facts that need to go on the table in this debate.

We know also that timeliness is being improved. Ms Crozier, in her contribution, sought to cast doubt on the validity of the statistics. I am not going to get into the particular case she raised, because we do not have that information in front of us, but 100 per cent of the category 1 surgeries are being delivered, and for categories 2 and 3, timeliness has improved by five days and 25 days respectively. So the timeliness of cat 2 and cat 3 surgeries is being delivered on. The improvement is underpinned by our Planned Surgery Reform Blueprint, which is both embedding change in the system and increasing the long-term capacity and supporting patients. We are investing in surgical equipment across metropolitan and regional health services. We are providing greater support to patients who are waiting for surgery by establishing patient support units, who engage with patients preparing for their surgery to provide non-surgical treatment options and other interventions to optimise their health before, during and after surgery. And we are listening to patients and increasing access to same-day surgeries, which in 2023–24 saved over 10,000 bed days, freeing up public hospital beds for other Victorians requiring different care. We know there is always more to do, and we will continue to back our hardworking healthcare workforce.

I just want to take a moment to reflect on the report that Ms Crozier mentioned, the report from the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office released today on planned surgery in Victoria. I know that Ms Crozier quoted some elements of the report, and she left some stuff out. It might have been when she referred to the ‘blah, blah, blah’ that was included in the response. What VAGO said, and this is a direct quote from VAGO, is:

The plan increased the number of planned surgeries and reduced the backlog caused by the pandemic.

It goes on to say:

In 2023–24 the department delivered 209,925 planned surgeries, compared with the target of 240,000.

So we clearly did not meet that, but:

Around two-thirds of this shortfall was mainly because fewer public surgeries were delivered in private hospitals than expected.

Conveniently this was not gone into by Ms Crozier in her contribution. The report goes on to say that the waiting list was reduced by 35 per cent and that there was an improvement in the number of patients being seen within clinically recommended timeframes.

Obviously, in terms of the delivery, there was a backlog caused by the pandemic. The government put a plan in place to deliver on that, and largely that plan delivered an increase in the number of planned surgeries and reduced the waiting list. I think we should all be proud of the efforts of our healthcare workforce responding to a once-in-a-century event to get the healthcare system back on track and to make sure that those who needed planned surgery support in the aftermath of the pandemic received it, and that is exactly what the VAGO report that was released today showed. What it demonstrates, what the figures that I referred to earlier in the contribution have already demonstrated, is that there are record numbers of Victorians receiving planned surgeries in this state. That is as a result of an investment in our healthcare system and an investment in our healthcare workforce that is unparalleled and unprecedented. It is not just an investment that occurs at one point, it is the result of an investment that is over a decade of Labor investing in our healthcare system and investing in our healthcare workforce. The planned surgery numbers that we have shown today – a record number of planned surgeries delivered in the last quarter and in the last 12 months – show that Labor’s investment in our public hospital system and in supporting our nurses and healthcare professionals is delivering the health care that Victorians need. That is undeniable.

I think when we enter into a debate about how our healthcare system is performing, of course there are always ways that we can do better and of course there are always things that we can do to improve patient experience, to improve patient outcomes. I think the big question that people need to reflect on is: is it Labor’s track record of investment and record delivery of services that they want or the Liberals’ record of cuts? That is the choice that people should be thinking about when they think about their healthcare system: Labor’s record of investment, Labor’s record of delivery of improvements to our healthcare system, or the Liberals’ record of cuts. That is the choice that people have. Our record is very, very clear, and I might leave my contribution there.

Lee TARLAMIS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (16:14): I move:

That debate on this motion be adjourned until the next day of meeting.

Motion agreed to and debate adjourned until next day of meeting.