Wednesday, 15 October 2025

 Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (17:36): I rise to speak to the report that was tabled in this place yesterday, the report of the Ambulance Victoria inquiry undertaken by the Legislative Council Legal and Social Issues Committee, of which I was a member. As Dr Heath has said, it was a very important inquiry that exposed a lot of the problems within the system and made significant findings and recommendations. I urge the government to consider these without delay and get on and fix what is really a very significant problem within the ambulance system.

Now, that is not to go against the paramedics who are working tirelessly on behalf of the Victorian community. But as we saw last night when the 000 outage occurred, it is really tying one hand behind their backs as they were struggling to deal with that, let alone the issues across the entire health system, with ambulance ramping, the lack of capacity and the lack of an efficient and effective health system that is able to move patients through – a system that has been mismanaged under Labor.

This report showed a number of things. As was demonstrated by the number of submissions that were provided with names withheld, that went to the fear that so many paramedics had of reprisal if they spoke out. But those that did speak and came before the committee gave great clarity around the issues.

It is true that the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission, which commenced reporting on this in 2021, has been looking at the toxic culture within Ambulance Victoria. That toxic culture still remains, from the evidence that we heard just recently. Governance failures run deep. We have seen a revolving door of CEOs, and I do hope that the current CEO Jordan Emery can steer this ship that has been completely and utterly rudderless for the last number of years.

What I think is incredibly concerning is the senior executives that came to the committee after one submission that was provided outlined an illegal gathering that occurred during COVID. It was something that I prosecuted during the committee’s inquiry because of the importance of what happened. We cannot dismiss COVID; we cannot just sweep COVID under the carpet and pretend it never happened. The ramifications of COVID in this state are profound, especially amongst young people. We are seeing that with education outcomes, education attendance and a whole range of issues around mental health implications for too many young people. It is well documented now that keeping children out of school was not the right decision, and that was just one decision by this government, who made many, many poor decisions on behalf of all Victorians. I raise this because in that very significant time there was an illegal gathering that occurred in recognition of two paramedics who had, sadly, died, and it was signed off, as we discovered through the inquiry, by the former CEO.

The cover-up around this issue was the thing that bothered me. I do not think anyone really would see the gathering and such as anything that was wrong. However, it was illegal when the rest of Melbourne was in lockdown, with the severe restrictions that were undertaken. What alarmed me was the evidence that came before the committee by senior executives who, in the first instance, misled the committee. Then we had to recall those witnesses, given the emails that were provided to the committee, with the information to say that they did know about it. But then one senior executive in particular came again, and again misled the Parliament. One can be forgiven for misleading the Parliament once – but twice, I find completely contemptuous of this institution, of what we are doing in this Parliament and on behalf of the Victorian people to have inquiries, to conduct this work, so we can get better outcomes. In this instance, we want better outcomes for patients, because too many patients have died because of failures within the system. I find that the consistent misleading of evidence provided to the Parliament by senior executives is a clear breach of the guiding principles and the operation of the Parliament. For that matter, I am pleased that the Ombudsman will be looking into it. I will have more to say on this very important report in the weeks to come.