Wednesday, 15 October 2025

 Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (17:27): I rise today to speak about the report that was tabled just yesterday on the inquiry into Ambulance Victoria. At our greatest time of need we rely on ambulance and emergency services, and we need to make sure that in Victoria those systems are up to scratch. Unfortunately, over the past few years particularly we have seen those continually fail. We have heard stories in here about people who have waited hours for ambulances to arrive and then have ended up either finding somebody to drive them or being told to get a taxi and things like that. I told a story about a girl in Sale who waited three days for an ambulance because the person on the phone said, ‘I can see you on the map, and you need to drive there yourself.’ After a couple of days, her mum stepped in, as good mums do, and insisted that they send an ambulance. They sent a non-emergency one to Sale from Morwell, and then once they got there and assessed her, they realised that she was in a critical condition and they had to send a MICA straight out, which resulted in her having two surgeries for something that could have been a simple treatment.

These things are the tip of the iceberg. When our systems fail, it is often the end user who ends up in the most trouble. As we opened that can of worms and began to drill down and see where the systems are failing in Ambulance Victoria, there were a couple of things. Just in the short time I have I am going to talk about a few things.

The first one is a climate of fear. There was an unbelievable amount of submissions that were put in that either had non-disclosed names or had to be done in private, and that was because there was a huge fear that this could cause people harm if they were known to be speaking to the inquiry. That was something that piqued a lot of concern in all of us from I believe all sides of this chamber. The second one is there needs to be some pretty serious reform around the rostering systems. The rostering system they use is very outdated. It is not family friendly, particularly for a lot of young women that were saying they were really struggling to manage work with family and other commitments and therefore would end up giving up their role in Ambulance Victoria. There are high rates of stress and burnout. We heard that this sort of working condition is actually pushing people to breaking point. There were many instances of exhaustion, huge workloads and burnout. It is not the most interesting part – I am sure some of my colleagues will cover the most interesting part of this inquiry in their contributions – but something that was very concerning was the toxic workplace culture. Bullying, harassment, nepotism and reprisal for those who challenged authority were reported. It was something that was not just a one-off. It was a theme that continued to come up over and over again. These are things that we really need to address, because when we do not have our systems right, it is the end user that ends up suffering, which is often people at their greatest time of need.

It was an extremely important inquiry. There are many recommendations which I really hope do get taken up. I want to just thank the incredible secretariat staff who always work around the clock and do so much organising with these inquiries. I want to thank my good friend and colleague Joe McCracken for leading an incredible inquiry; Ann-Marie Hermans for doing an amazing job; Georgie Crozier, the shadow minister for ambulance and healthcare in this state; and everyone. This is something that we really need to improve in order to improve the quality of life in Victoria.