Tuesday, 9 December 2025

 Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (13:16): I am getting increasingly concerned about what I am hearing from health professionals around the deteriorating state of health care in this state. They talk to me about what is happening in emergency departments, with increased demand, workforce shortages, increasing sick leave and, as we know, access blocks. We have had ambulance ramping and people getting inadequate treatment and transfer to hospitals. Morale in some places is very, very low, and that is having an impact on the overall ability of health professionals to undertake the work that they do. They are telling me that patients who are being brought in in ambulances are being assessed on trolleys or in corridors; they are in chairs; they are having very private and delicate results having to be spoken about with a lack of privacy; and there are inadequate assessments being able to be done, because patients are on chairs. This is what doctors are telling me. They are saying that this is completely unacceptable, and the government has done nothing to address the increasing demands and the concerns that they have. I note that the government’s initiative for timely emergency care is surely taking some patients out of ambulances that are being ramped, but it is not providing high-quality care, and that is what these doctors, nurses and others are saying to me. They are very concerned about the deteriorating state of our health system and the circumstances they are placed in.