Wednesday, 4 February 2026

 Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (10:42): I rise to move:

That this house condemns the Allan Labor government for the ongoing chaos and mismanagement within Ambulance Victoria and notes that:

(1)   Ambulance Victoria’s statement of priorities determines its responsibility to deliver high-quality and safe care, and timely access to care;

(2)   the latest publicly available data from the Victorian Agency for Health Information shows a continued failure to meet ambulance response targets;

(3)   ambulances, including mobile intensive care units, were not staffed during recent heatwave conditions due to budget shortfalls;

(4)   according to the Ambulance Union, from Friday 23 January to Thursday 29 January 2026, stations with unstaffed ambulances included:

(a) Box Hill, Hampton Park, Werribee, Wyndham Vale, Gowanbrae, Nunawading, Epping, Rosanna, Broadmeadows and Watsonia for the day shift;

(b) Black Rock, Devon Meadows, Endeavour Hills, Garfield, Jacksons Creek, Bellfield and South Morang for the afternoon shift;

(c) Beaconsfield, Belgrave, Big Hill, Caulfield, Doncaster, Mount Martha, Mulgrave, Rosebud, Sorrento, Waverley, Mernda, Colac and Inglewood for the night shift;

(5)   many more ambulances only had a single crew member and were unable to transport patients; and

(6)   the priorities of the Allan Labor government are all wrong when ambulance shifts cannot be filled due to budget constraints, yet the government wastes hundreds of millions of Victorian taxpayer dollars on cancelling the Commonwealth Games, millions of dollars on machete bins, hundreds of thousands of dollars on leased pot plants for the Suburban Rail Loop Authority, and has wasted in excess of $50 billion on project blowouts.

This motion is around a very important issue that I have great concern about and I know many, many Victorians have great concern about. I do believe that the government has failed Victorians on a number of fronts. My motion says:

That this house condemns the Allan Labor government for the ongoing chaos and mismanagement within Ambulance Victoria and notes that:

(1)   Ambulance Victoria’s statement of priorities determines its responsibility to deliver high-quality and safe care, and timely access to care;

(2)   the latest publicly available data from the Victorian Agency for Health Information shows a continued failure to meet ambulance response targets;

(3)   ambulances, including mobile intensive care units, were not staffed during recent heatwave conditions due to budget shortfalls;

(4)   according to the Ambulance Union, from Friday 23 January to Thursday 29 January 2026, stations with unstaffed ambulances included:

(a) Box Hill, Hampton Park, Werribee, Wyndham Vale, Gowanbrae, Nunawading, Epping, Rosanna, Broadmeadows and Watsonia for the day shift;

(b) Black Rock, Devon Meadows, Endeavour Hills, Garfield, Jacksons Creek, Bellfield and South Morang for the afternoon shift;

(c) Beaconsfield, Belgrave, Big Hill, Caulfield, Doncaster, Mount Martha, Mulgrave, Rosebud, Sorrento, Waverley, Mernda, Colac and Inglewood and for the night shift …

There were a lot of unstaffed ambulance stations throughout the days, and it was very, very concerning over that period of time. The motion goes on to say:

(5)   many more ambulances only had a single crew member and were unable to transport patients …

The issue I think is really where more and more Victorians are understanding what this government is about. They are taking Victoria in the wrong direction and their priorities are wrong. My motion states:

(6)   the priorities of the Allan Labor government are all wrong when ambulance shifts cannot be filled due to budget constraints, yet the government wastes hundreds of millions of Victorian taxpayer dollars on cancelling the Commonwealth Games –

that they promised –

… millions of dollars on machete bins …

I mean, what a farcical policy that was. We see the crime. We see what happened. Only last night –

Members interjecting.

Georgie CROZIER: Labor members interject, but these machete attacks are still happening and Victorians’ lives are being put at risk. It was a farcical policy: $13 million for 40 machete bins – goodness me. It continues:

… hundreds of thousands of dollars on leased pot plants for the Suburban Rail Loop Authority …

It is a disgrace that this Suburban Rail Loop Authority can think that they can go and waste $200,000 on pot plants, for heaven’s sake, when we cannot fill ambulance shifts because of budget constraints. And of course there are the massive waste and mismanagement in the government’s infrastructure program – $50 billion and rising.

With the interest rate hike that happened with the RBA only yesterday – what is that going to do to Victoria’s bottom line and the $20 million of interest repayments we have to pay before anything else is paid on the borrowings and debt of this government? They think they are financial gurus. They are the worst the state has ever seen. That is going to put more pressure on the Victorian taxpayer because of the over $1 million in interest repayments that we are paying now every hour – just imagine, $1 million every hour in interest repayments. It is a staggering figure, yet it just seems to brush over those opposite. That is why I and many, many others are concerned about the budget constraints with Ambulance Victoria.

The government will say they have invested more, but they forget to understand exactly what they are investing in and how it should be applied. I want to go to the statement of priorities, because I think it is telling. In the statement of priorities to the minister, under ‘Background’ it says:

The annual agreements support the delivery of, or substantial progress towards, the key shared objectives of quality and safety, good governance and leadership, access and timeliness, and financial sustainability.

…

High standards of governance, transparency and accountability are essential.

We do not get any of that, and I think it is absolutely telling, given the inquiry into Ambulance Victoria, which you were on, Acting President Galea. We conducted that inquiry together, an excellent inquiry, and it showed just what was going on in Ambulance Victoria. – the toxic nature of a toxic culture which continued to thrive, marked by bullying, harassment, nepotism and reprisals against those who challenged authority.

Ambulance ramping continues to undermine patient outcomes, and we see that continually. The government has changed a policy direction on that, and I want to come back to that because it has impacted on the quality of emergency services and the delivery of care, where people have been substantially mismanaged. We have got failures in the system where ambulances do not turn up. Tragically, Victorians have died waiting for an ambulance. I see Mr McGowan nodding over there because it happened in his electorate not so long ago, and in Mr Welch’s electorate too. A former nurse who, sadly, called for an ambulance not once but twice after having a fall and bleeding waited 5 hours and died. That should not happen. When it happened, in 2025, it should not have happened. There lies the problem around what we are grappling with. I understand there are issues within the system and there are things that occur that cannot always be avoided. I understand that. I am a former clinician. I understand how things can overtake and a variety of issues might arise. However, these issues are not one-offs; they are continual and they are increasing.

The inquiry also showed that excessive paramedic workloads placed undue pressure on employees, leading to burnout, stress and resignations – hence again we have got these shifts that are unmanned. The report highlighted the failures at Ambulance Victoria that have really been allowed to grow and fester under Labor over the last 11 or 12 years. It really is time for a change because of where this government is going.

I want to just go back to ambulance response times because the statement of priorities is really farcical around transparency and accountability and timely access to care. Every quarter we have reporting on ambulance response times. The last known data, which was for the July-August-September quarter and which came out 16 days late, showed that 36 per cent of ambulances did not arrive within the expected timeframe of their 15-minute response.

That is more than one in three Victorians waiting in excess of that 15 minutes. That is a very dangerous situation if you are needing an emergency response. Every second counts if you require an emergency response for an ambulance. Those response times are continuing to just be static. They are not improving. The response is not what the government promised it would be – the government’s own targets.

There were 101,632 code 1 call-outs in that last reported quarter that I am referring to. From those statistics 36 per cent means that 36,485 Victorians did not get their ambulance within that code 1 15-minute response time. That has an enormous flow-on impact around the quality of care and the ability to deliver care and have a better patient outcome, let alone a better patient experience.

I have been watching. Where is the latest Victorian Agency for Health Information data for October, November and December, which was due out on 31 January – days ago? It is still not there. I asked my office to check before I got to stand. No, it is still not there. The government will be waiting for something or spinning some rubbish about their failures. We know that there are tens of thousands of Victorians waiting for surgery, waiting in pain. Their lives are on hold, they are deteriorating. They are relying on opioid drug therapy to get them through the pain. These things are having a real impact on the quality of life and the ability for people to go about their daily lives, go to work, be able to function, and this government has failed them. They continue to fail them. It is no wonder there are so many people requiring an emergency response when there are so many people with their health deteriorating.

That goes to the point of the second part of my motion. I want to now go to the issue around MICA units not being staffed during the recent hot spell we had. We are in summer, and I admit that it was very, very hot, and it has been extremely hot particularly in the northern parts of Victoria. There were many challenges around the bushfires, and I want to pay tribute to all of those that were in that emergency response, including the paramedics, although they were not stationed on the ground in the fire areas, even where fires were under control. I was getting feedback from CFAs going, ‘No, there’s no ambulance stationed here.’ I am hoping that all this will be teased out through various questions and inquiries. Nevertheless, I want to go to the point around MICA units. The government promised that they would deliver 40 paramedics in 2023–24 for a cost of around $15.8 million. But an FOI response that I recently received – it has taken me a year – shows that Ambulance Victoria told the government, ‘With that funding you’ve provided, we can’t deliver you 40 MICA paramedics.’ It said:

As previously communicated to the Department of Health by AV, this funding envelope is insufficient to train and deliver 40 mobile intensive care ambulance … paramedics. Based on the total cost … supporting and deploying fully credentialled MICA interns … the funding will deliver approximately 22 new MICA interns.

They did not even do that. There was a media release last year – I have got it somewhere here – and government trying to spin again. They put on 14 new interns. This is a promise the government made. They continue to spruik what they are doing, but they are failing to deliver on their promises. I think Victorians are seeing through this. They can see the failures, they can see the gaps and they certainly are experiencing those failures on the ground. As the Leader of the Opposition Jess Wilson says, if you cannot get the little things right, how on earth do you expect to fix the big things like this? When you are wasting money on pot plants that are leased, for God’s sake – $200,000 – and blowing $600 million on a Commonwealth Games promise that was just a furphy, it is quite disgraceful.

That is why I and many, many others – and I speak to paramedics – know they have every right to be concerned about where it is all heading, given the financial situation the state is in. They understand that the terrible financial position Labor has put Victoria in is really hurting the ability to deliver services such as ambulance services – to be able to fund these shifts that I am talking about. When you look at these Friday-to-Thursday shifts, the six days from just a couple of weeks ago, and I will not read in the stations where they are unstaffed – this is not coming from me; it is coming from the ambulance union, who are expressing their concern – there are big gaps. That means that Victorians have every right to question it – ‘What happens if I need an ambulance? Do I trust the system? Can I get an ambulance when I need one?’ I have heard terrible stories in the last couple of days around what is happening when people ring for an ambulance. They are being questioned about the validity of their symptoms. Family members are distraught, because they are going, ‘We need an ambulance. Why is this not happening? I’ve paid my taxes, I’ve paid my ambulance membership fee, and I can’t get an ambulance when a family member needs one.’

I think this needs a great big overview, a review of the whole thing. I can tell you should we be successful in November – and by God I hope we are, for the sake of Victoria – I will be looking into these very issues, because something is not going right with the triage, the dispatch and the ability of Victorians to get an ambulance when they need one. It is appalling. There are far too many stories that I hear and my colleagues hear. Far too many are crying out and saying, ‘For goodness sake, just fix it. Stop wasting money. Get your priorities right.’ That is what we say: the priorities are all wrong from this government when we cannot get these things fixed.

The other point of my motion is to go again to the shortfalls. Many more ambulances only had a single crew member and were unable to transport patients. They could not actually activate what they needed to do. It is incredibly frustrating for those paramedics to not have the support and the ability to go out and do the work that they want to do to support the community in their time of need, so there is immense frustration amongst a whole range of people, who are just going, ‘This is wrong. We should be able to be supporting the community. We should be able to be manning our ambulance crews properly, whether it is in a heatwave or whether it is on a freezing cold winter’s day in a high flu season.’ We have got an ageing population and we have got a growing population. We have got a population that has increasing chronic diseases, whether that is diabetes, obesity, mental health, drugs and alcohol or cancer.

It is the very reason why I say we should not abolish VicHealth. But Labor is abolishing VicHealth. They are sucking it into their black hole. That preventative health measure and the early intervention keep people out of an ambulance. It keeps people out of the acute system. That is what we should be looking at. This government has lost sight of what it is responsible for. If you read that statement of priorities, which all sounds very good on paper, they are not doing it. They are failing to deliver the statement of priorities and what the minister signs off on. I will not accept the government’s lines about what they are doing, because it is in black and white through FOI documents that we have finally received. It is there in the data with the response times that continue to fail way too many Victorians.

There is an increased demand for ambulances. We know that. We have known that since the pandemic – a 14 per cent increase in demand. During COVID, many of you were not in the Parliament at the time, but if you had been you would have heard me stand up here and say, ‘When you shut down surgery, when you stop screening, people are going to get sicker, and we are going to see this following the pandemic.’

Guess what? That is happening. That has happened. There is greater demand. The community has complex health needs in a whole range of areas, and they do expect to have an ambulance. I know that there are frivolous calls, but that is no excuse for the many, many, many delays, especially for the elderly, who deserve to have better care than they are receiving. I also note in the statement of priorities regarding this that it says around the elderly:

Supporting services for older Victorians:

12. A reformed health system that responds to the needs of older people to receive the right care in the right place …

That is not happening. We saw it through the example of Lois Casboult and whatever the decisions that were made through the virtual ED that did not assess her properly and what was going on in terms of her physical symptoms and what she was doing. I will not accept that that woman, who had a shocking fall, needed to be transported by private car. She might have said, ‘I don’t want to go.’ Of course she would have said that. Most elderly patients say that, ‘I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go.’ I have experienced that myself with my own family. That is not the point. Paramedics and those within the health system should be absolutely saying, ‘In your best interests, we need to get you to hospital.’ And when the family did, she was rushed. She was found to have a broken pelvis and bleeding on her brain, and she was in a very bad way. I urge all members to support this motion so that it gives the recognition to Victorians about the improvements and about the problems that continue to occur.

 Anasina GRAY-BARBERIO (Northern Metropolitan) (11:02): I rise to speak on motion 1228 moved by member for Southern Metropolitan Ms Crozier. I want to start by saying something that I think everyone in this place agrees on: our paramedics do an extraordinary job. They work long hours under intense pressure and with a level of professionalism and care for Victorian communities that deserves our respect. Our paramedics are under enormous pressure. We saw just last week what added pressure does to the system during a heatwave: ramping and ballooned-out response times. The cracks in the system have become impossible to ignore. But to be clear, this is not a failure of paramedics.

Ambulance Victoria’s own strategic plan sets out an ambitious goal that by 2028, it will be a world-leading ambulance service in terms of patient outcomes, people’s experiences and their connection to the broader healthcare system. Today Ambulance Victoria is already responsible for delivering out-of-hospital, mobile and emergency health care to more than 6.6 million Victorians across over 227,000 square kilometres. Australian Bureau of Statistics projections show Victoria’s population will continue to grow, reaching between 9 and 13 million by 2071. Of course we will need a resilient, robust and well-resourced healthcare system, and a major player in the whole ecosystem is Ambulance Victoria.

While we share the concerns that underpin this motion before us, it does not offer any solutions that would see a real impact for Ambulance Victoria. For that reason, we will not be supporting this motion. The Legal and Social Issues Committee, a committee I sat on with many colleagues, including the mover of this motion, Ms Crozier, recently published the inquiry into Ambulance Victoria report. This inquiry is done and has already delivered a set of recommendations that speak to the real problems with Ambulance Victoria and the broader health system – problems like pressures on the organisation, its culture, staffing and adequate resourcing. Paramedics, Ambulance Victoria leadership, unions and experts engaged with that process in good faith. But still we wait for the government to provide any kind of response, let alone begin to implement the recommendations.

Secondly, the government continues to desperately underfund the parts of the health system that would take pressure off ambulances and paramedics. A struggling ambulance service cannot be fixed by tweaking around the edges. It is not an isolated problem, it is the result of a struggling and stretched health system. When hospitals are full, ambulances cannot offload patients. When ambulances cannot offload, paramedics cannot respond to new call-outs, and when paramedics are stuck – ramped – it is the community that suffers.

One of the biggest missed opportunities here is preventative health. If we genuinely want fewer people ending up in emergency departments, we need to invest in keeping people healthy in the first place. That is why the government’s decision to abolish VicHealth is so deeply disappointing. VicHealth has played a critical role in reducing chronic disease, improving mental health and addressing the social drivers of poor health. Cutting preventative health does not save money, it just pushes costs further down the line, where they land squarely on hospitals and ambulance services.

End-of-life care is another critical pressure point in the health system. Too many people are stuck in hospital beds not because they need acute medical care but because it is the only place they can get support at all. Productivity Commission data shows older Australians are now waiting an average of 245 days, and in some cases up to 380 days, to receive approved home care. Many die before that care ever arrives. This rationing of aged care has left around 3000 older Australians occupying hospital beds simply because there is no help available at home. That blocks beds and places yet more strain on ambulances and paramedics. It is not dignified end-of-life care, and it is a clear example of how failures elsewhere in the system flow directly into our emergency services. Ambulance Victoria needs a government that invests in prevention and treats the ambulance system as part of the broader health ecosystem, not an afterthought. Until we do that right, paramedics and the people in their care will keep paying the price for decisions made in this place.

 Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (11:07): I am pleased to rise to speak on Ms Crozier’s motion relating to Ambulance Victoria, noting, as the two previous speakers were, that I was a member of the Legal and Social Issues Committee which last year undertook a fairly comprehensive inquiry into Ambulance Victoria. The report that we tabled goes some way to understanding some of the challenges that exist in Victoria’s paramedic workforce. As a member of the committee, and certainly in the additional comments that as one of the government members we made to that report, I think the majority report, whilst rightly uncovering some serious concerns with some organisational and cultural practices at Ambulance Victoria – which I will get to in a moment in this contribution, I think, as this motion does, and as the contributions also have – does not acknowledge the significant additional resources that have been placed into Ambulance Victoria in terms of providing additional staffing but also providing additional support to that staffing and in providing additional equipment, capital and other service upgrades. I will get to all of those.

I will state at the outset that the work that our paramedics do every day and every night saves lives right across the state. It helps people, some in their moments of greatest need, providing them with the care and support that can certainly alleviate pain and injury and suffering but can also save lives. The work that our paramedics do each and every day and each and every night is something that we always support. Labor has consistently delivered additional resources for our paramedics. We have supported those paramedics themselves to become better trained and better equipped to do the dangerous and challenging job that they have to do. They will always have that support from us.

There are several issues countenanced in the motion, and I will try and go through some of them, each in turn. At its core a strong Ambulance Victoria requires a commitment from government to have the resources that it needs. We have as a government invested in the on-road workforce at Ambulance Victoria. It has grown by more than 50 per cent under our government, and we have invested a record $2 billion in ambulance services. Since 2015, in the last decade, Labor has invested $279 million to deliver 48 new ambulance stations across the state, and there are two more in planning. One of those additional stations is in Bentleigh, and the last time I went through and spoke to the paramedics who are likely to be stationed there, they spoke of just how critical those new stations are to improving service and responses to local communities. I am glad that so many communities across our state have benefited from those investments in stations and facilities in the last decade.

The questions in the motion relating to how Ambulance Victoria undertakes its rostering arrangements, including things such as overtime, are matters that should rightly rest with operational decision-making at Ambulance Victoria. I do not think it is in anyone’s interest, let alone the people of Victoria’s interest, to have politicians setting rosters for the ambulance service, and I think that we should be making sure that those sorts of operational decisions are made by the people who run the ambulance system. What we can do is make sure that management has the support that it needs – additional staffing, additional stations and additional training – which is what we are delivering and have delivered to make sure that the management of Ambulance Victoria can think about how to make sure that its workforce has the dynamic operational set-up to meet the evolving and changing paramedicine needs of the Victorian community.

Of course Ambulance Victoria need to respond to a community today that is different to how it was in the past, and some of the changes that Ambulance Victoria say that they are making are about making sure that paramedics are rostered when they are needed the most, including improving paramedic coverage across night shifts. Better night shift resourcing does reduce reliance on single responders, which in turn promotes the occupational safety of the paramedic workforce, and improving night shift coverage also improves response times and ensures patients can get care quicker. The consequential changes that are made to rostering to achieve these goals need to be made as well, and their workforce strategy and their rostering strategy do just that. But those are decisions best made by Ambulance Victoria.

What the government can do and what it is important to do is twofold. One thing is to make sure that the rest of the healthcare system is supported so that ambulance operators, paramedics, can deliver patients to hospitals quickly and safely so that we can ensure there is adequate resourcing and the triaging through our emergency departments happens in a way that means that patients can move from ambulances through ED and to appropriate further care as efficiently as possible. More work needs to happen there; we saw that very clearly in the course of our inquiry last year. But it is also about providing those who require assistance with more convenient and better opportunities to get that health care than just simply ringing 000, ringing for an ambulance. That is why the investments that we are making in expanding the Victorian Virtual Emergency Department are so critical, with around 79 per cent of ambulance cases referred by an in-field paramedic providing access to emergency health care without being transported to an ED.

It is another tool in the toolkit that our paramedics have when they go to help – that they can refer these patients on to places like the virtual emergency department, something we have here in Victoria. There was investment in the most recent budget of $58 million, including more short-stay beds to improve patient flow through our emergency departments. We are trying to improve primary health care through things like the urgent care clinics so that people can get the care they need in the community without necessarily needing to call paramedics.

We are also investing in the paramedic workforce and supporting Victoria to have the most highly qualified paramedic workforce in the nation. We have invested $20 million to train and deploy Australia’s first ever paramedic practitioners, and we want to have 25 of them on the road this year. The training is well underway, and that is something that we heard a lot about in our inquiry last year. What it does do is enable better care in community, and it enables the paramedics to deliver a more sophisticated and wider suite of treatments to those who are in need of assistance.

We have got our first centre of paramedicine in partnership with Victoria University in the west of Melbourne, and $10 million has gone in from the state government to support the improvements to training, innovation and skills in education and ensuring that our paramedics have the support to deliver operational care that is informed by contemporary best practice and to the highest quality standards. The centre will have the capacity to train around 1500 students and is about offering the very best training that we possibly can here in Victoria.

As I said, the latest report on government services demonstrated that Victoria’s paramedics and those working in our ambulance services are the most qualified of any state or territory. We need to and we will continue to invest to support our paramedic workforce. Labor stand with our ambulance service, we stand with our paramedics and we will continue to invest and support this critical workforce here in the state.

 Gaelle BROAD (Northern Victoria) (11:17): I am pleased to stand with the Nationals in support of this motion. Paramedics and the work of people in that area are just so critical, particularly to people in regional Victoria. A member of my family, their life was saved after suffering heart failure. They live in a regional area, and it was a MICA paramedic that came and assisted. I, from a personal perspective, just want to say how thankful I am for the training and the quick response that happened on that day that saved their life. But I know that is not the situation for many, many others, and I remember – and I raised this in the Parliament in my first year back in 2023 – a family that I heard from in Donald, where they needed an ambulance just 200 metres from the hospital, and yet they had to wait hours for an ambulance. Unfortunately that family member passed away the next day. I have spoken to many other people who have been in contact with me to raise concerns about no ambulance being available, about being told they had to get a taxi to get to the hospital, and yet they live so close to Bendigo in that situation. Others, where no ambulance was available, had to take their loved ones themselves, often in significant pain and distress, to hospital.

I have also raised time and time again the issues that I know are happening in our region of Northern Victoria because of the ramping that is happening at our hospitals. We are seeing that in Wodonga, and we have seen it in Bendigo and in Shepparton. So much time is being wasted by ambulances that need to stay there, not being able to get out again to respond to emergency situations. I know that also an added pressure is the lack of aged care services that we have in regional areas and people that end up having a bed in a hospital because there is simply nowhere for them to go.

I know there was a Productivity Commission report just recently that was talking about the extensive delays to getting aged care assessments, which is obviously contributing to that as well. I know that has been an issue in Albury–Wodonga hospital, as I visited there last year, and in Bendigo I heard too that local professionals were talking about how there were 42 beds being taken by people that needed, really, aged care services. This is the challenge that we are facing. Yet we do have a number of paramedics being trained in Victoria. I received information from Andrew McDonell, who is with HMS Community Homecare & Clinic. They are based in Gisborne, and they were talking about how in Australia there are 15 universities offering a paramedic undergraduate degree, with a cohort of about 5000 students across the country, but there are not the placements to enable that training. This is causing a significant number of degree-qualified paramedics to remain without work, and this is getting worse year on year. I have spoken to people that know many of their fellow students that have now moved overseas to find work. They are not staying here in Victoria. Some have ended up working in gardening businesses; others have ended up working in supermarkets. It is extraordinary to me, when I see the need that we have for paramedics to be working in our regional communities where health services are lacking and that divide between the regions and what we see in the city and in life expectancy. There is a big gap there still, and we need to address that. To think that we have trained paramedics and yet here we have ambulance response times that are not where they should be. I know from speaking with residents up in the Indigo shire that it has one of the worst response times for ambulances in the state, and it continues to have. I have also raised in this chamber concerns about a rolled ambulance after, apparently, an 18-hour shift that they had done, and they had an accident. I think this is just some of what we are seeing because of the pressure that is in our system at the moment.

Here we have the Labor government, which has been in now since 2014, yet the issues continue and we see the wrong priorities that this government has. I know that Ms Crozier spoke about that in her contribution, and that is referenced in this motion as well. But currently Victoria does have the highest taxes and the highest debt. We are paying nearly $1 million every single hour just in interest repayments, and here we have, as this motion refers to, shifts that cannot be filled, simply because of the financial constraints – because we have a government that continues to absolutely waste funds. They certainly do not treat taxpayers money like their own money, because we have seen millions wasted with the cancelling of the Commonwealth Games. We have had millions spent on machete bins, hundreds of thousands of dollars spent to lease pot plants for the Suburban Rail Loop Authority and over $50 billion on project blowouts in this state. That is the situation we are in. Yet we know that in regional areas it is so important that we have improved response times and we have paramedics that are productively employed to contribute to better health care in our regions. Certainly I am looking forward to November. I am so glad that 2026 is finally here, because we have a state election coming up, and people will get to choose who they want to lead this state. We have seen the record of this government, and I can assure you that a Liberal–Nationals government is absolutely committed to delivering a world-class health system that Victorians can rely on.

 Jacinta ERMACORA (Western Victoria) (11:24): I thank Ms Crozier for the opportunity to speak on the Allan Labor government’s record on supporting Ambulance Victoria. The Allan Labor government will always deliver the resources that are needed for our paramedics. Like others, I want to acknowledge the hard work that our ambos do in Victoria, in particular in western Victoria, and also the extraordinary pressures that our paramedics are under, often confronting situations that they cannot anticipate – situations where 100 per cent of their patients are usually in a very distressed state, perhaps in a situation that they have never been in before. That requires not just extensive medical, first aid and first response knowledge and experience but it also involves extensive personal skills and communication skills because of the diversity of situations and people that they care for. In particular, I want to acknowledge the incredible work that our ambos have done in western Victoria, particularly throughout January this year.

Western Victoria experienced some of the worst conditions of the recent heatwave, with communities enduring extreme and sustained temperatures. I share the deep concern of local residents about the impact of these conditions on health, emergency demand and community safety. Ambulance Victoria saw an average 12 per cent increase in workload across the state on 7 January, the first heatwave day we had, when parts of western Victoria saw temperatures in the mid-40s. These extreme heat events place additional strain on ambulance services, particularly in rural and regional areas, where distances are greater and therefore resources more stretched. Ambos also have to be relocated from branches within declared regions of catastrophic fire danger. I know from my years as a CFA volunteer that the first rule is to maintain your own safety so that you can then help others, and if you cannot maintain your own safety, then you cannot help others. The same applies for ambulance services. There were, as colleagues may remember, a number of ambulance services moved from danger areas, catastrophic areas, to nearby areas so that they were able to ensure that they could continue to respond if needed. Crews are redeployed into the zones in the case of serious or life-threatening situations.

It is impossible to ignore that climate-driven extreme weather is worsening these pressures, and it is deeply concerning that those opposite continue to deny climate change while actively working against addressing the root issues. Unlike those opposite, this government takes a rational approach. We are not stuck in some tedious rehashing of the culture wars of the last decade at the expense of the welfare of Victorians. We have seen the growing demand for ambulance services and responded by growing the on-road workforce by more than 50 per cent and investing a record $2 billion in ambulance services. Since 2015 the Labor government has invested $279 million to deliver 48 new ambulance stations across the state, with two additional stations in planning, providing better working conditions for paramedics and ensuring life-saving emergency care is available for all Victorians, no matter where they live.

Rostering arrangements, including overtime, are an operational matter for Ambulance Victoria. I want to endorse what my colleague Mr Batchelor said about the absurdity of politicians meddling in rostering arrangements for ambulances. I can imagine the disaster that would involve. Ambulance Victoria’s whole-of-system approach allows them to distribute ambulance resources across the state to ensure emergency coverage is maintained and patients are cared for. This means the right resource is available for each patient and the closest appropriate ambulance is always sent to an emergency case, regardless of where it is based.

As part of its dynamic resource deployment Ambulance Victoria has made changes to its overtime rostering, ensuring resources are allocated to where they are needed. Ambulance Victoria says these changes are about making sure paramedics are rostered when they are needed most, including improving paramedic coverage across night shifts. Better night shift resourcing coverage reduces the reliance on single paramedic responders, which in turn improves the occupational safety of the paramedic workforce. Improving night shift coverage will also improve response times and ensure patients get care quicker. Let me be clear: this is about improving performance and occupational safety.

We are aware additional paramedics are required to fill vacant shifts to ensure community safety. Ambulance Victoria will always seek to roster and fill those shifts, and this strategy does exactly that. And when it comes to mobile intensive care ambulance paramedics, these are a critical specialist resource. Vacancies have been particularly challenging to fill overnight, which is why Ambulance Victoria prioritises filling MICA shifts ahead of those roles to maintain safe access to advanced critical care capability.

We also know that an ambulance is not always what is needed, so we have continued to invest in initiatives to give Victorians the right resources to address their health concerns, freeing up paramedics so they can get back on the road sooner. These include expanding the Victorian Virtual Emergency Department, delivering urgent care clinics and Nurse-on-Call and expanding the ability of GPs and pharmacists to deliver appropriate health services.

Of course the contraction of access to primary care services in this nation was presided over by the coalition federal government, and it is the Victorian government that is responding to those shortages by introducing these health services. In that regard the problem was caused by the conservative government, and we are fixing it. Urgent care clinics –

Georgie Crozier interjected.

Jacinta ERMACORA: Taking responsibility – thank you. These include the Victorian Virtual Emergency Department, the urgent care clinics, Nurse-on-Call and expanding the ability of GPs and pharmacists to deliver appropriate health services. That is taking responsibility. It is no coincidence that the federal government have taken over some of those responsibilities, because Medicare and the primary health system are essentially federal issues. So I think it really is a bit cheeky to whinge about this when a lot of the shortages in primary health services were caused by conservatives in government. Ambulance Victoria know how much this matters. During the recent heatwave they posted call-outs on their social media for people to use these resources and save paramedics for where they are needed the most – for saving lives.

The key reform we have introduced that directly addresses the challenges faced by rural and regional communities is the introduction of paramedic practitioners. We have invested $20.1 million to train and deploy Australia’s first ever paramedic practitioners, with a commitment to have 25 on the road by 2026 – another initiative taking responsibility for the health of Victorian people and another initiative that takes responsibility for the failure of a federal government. I could go on, but I am running out of time. I would say in closing that I absolutely thank every paramedic that has worked in the heat this January, and I support paramedic services entirely.

 Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (11:34): Well, I am about to be very cheeky, and I am about to whinge, because I care about not only regional but all Victorians getting the health care that they need and access to on-time response times, ambulance services and paramedics. I am going to be very cheeky, and I am going to whinge a lot. I also want to take issue with the previous speaker’s comments – and I am doing this from memory – that this government always delivers the resources that are needed. Well, there is a whole lot of evidence to say otherwise, and I am about to read that into Hansard. Indeed the previous speaker commented that we are meddling with things. We are shining a light on what everyday Victorians experience. They are highly concerned, and it shows in the data, that our ambulance system is overwhelmed, underfunded, under-resourced and on its knees. Let me give some context for that.

The inquiry of the Legal and Social Issues Committee – one of the committees that I am not on – was a very important inquiry. I thank Ms Crozier for bringing it forward in this house, for taking it on and observing the importance of it and bringing it through.

Georgie Crozier interjected.

Melina BATH: Correct – the government voted against it: ‘Nothing to see here. Stop meddling, upper house MPs; stop meddling in the welfare of our state.’ Response times came out through that inquiry. One of the key issues was worsening ambulance response times. Ambulance Victoria repeatedly failed to meet its benchmark of 15 minutes for urgent code 1 cases, in some cases – and here they come – recording response times as low as 55 per cent against a target of 85 per cent.

Let me go to my area, which I am very passionate about, and my constituents, and let us look at the performance report that comes from the first quarter of 2025–26. That covers July to September of last year. Let us look at the code 1 response times. In Baw Baw, only 57.3 per cent of call-outs were met within code 1 response times – the average response time was 16 minutes and 25 seconds – against a statewide benchmark of an 85 per cent acceptable rating. Bass Coast met code 1s within 15 minutes 57.8 per cent of the time – average response time was 16 minutes and 27 seconds. Seconds matter when somebody is lying on the floor of their kitchen having a cardiac arrest. Seconds matter if you have broken your hip. I remember a case in Latrobe Valley: they were lying on the road, and they had to wait for a very long time with an injury. In relation to Latrobe City, code 1s were met 71 per cent of the time.

A member interjected.

Melina BATH: Yes, that is below the target. In South Gippsland, 48 per cent – average response time 18 minutes; Wellington, 17 minutes and 45 seconds; Cardinia, 17 minutes; and East Gippsland shire, 20 minutes on average. I can tell you some stories from East Gippsland that are just heartbreaking, stories of families. There were occasions – more than one – when a family member perished because they were waiting for ambulances to turn up.

They cannot manufacture from what is not there. It is the resources that are not there – the lack of MICA coverage in Eastern Victoria Region. Gippsland paramedics have raised deep concern, and they do all the time, about the gaps in this MICA paramedic support. East of Morwell during night shifts there is just not the coverage. We see ambulance ramping in Gippsland hospitals – Bairnsdale and Latrobe Valley. Recently my colleague Martin Cameron and I just happened to walk past the emergency centre at the Latrobe Valley regional hospital, and it was ramped. All of the bays had completely filled with ambulances waiting for the ED to be able to triage them. That is a consideration all its own. We value our regional hospitals so much, but they are chronically under pressure and often underfunded. And we know that they need letters of comfort to keep them going.

These are the concerns that face regional people. These are the things that I am going to whinge about because these are the facts that face our people with the government’s mismanagement after 11 years in executive government controlling this stuff.

We also know that paramedics are under-resourced, burnt out and their equipment is often outdated. Again, the further you go into the regions, many paramedics, if you look at their age demographic, are ageing. It is hard to get young paramedics to the regions, particularly when they hear about the workload and the stress that is there. It is a stressful workplace. People go into it fully wide open, understanding that this is a stressful, dynamic career, and we thank those people for doing it. But if they are going to feel under-resourced and undervalued by this government, then it is no wonder that the attrition rate for regional paramedics is quite high. Many of those paramedics are our friends down the street and are respected so much. Sometimes they have multiple family presentations on the sporting field or wherever, and we value and trust them. Indeed they are vital to our wellbeing.

The chronic mismanagement is in this report that was delivered last year. Let us go to some other very sad points in that report. Let us talk about the cultural dysfunction and workplace misconduct. We know that the inquiry uncovered bullying, harassment and intimidation. This is a real shame. Good leadership comes from executive government, from the minister down through the department. Good leadership provides confidence and it provides direction, and we need to see a stamping out of bullying, harassment and intimidation. They have no place in our systems, particularly where you have vulnerable people in the workplace. We see burnt out paramedics. We see 18-hour shifts, outdated equipment and excessive administrative burdens. We all see that, particularly in this space. As Ms Crozier just said, what is the government doing on the sideline there? It is taking away a very valuable service that has been around for many years in terms of VicHealth.

In conclusion, I just want to go to a couple of points in relation to this government. This government’s budget is an ever-broadening black hole. We hear often that we are broke. Victoria receives taxes. It receives multibillions of dollars in taxes. It is the direction that this government takes that is putting us into an ever-widening black hole. It wasted $600 million not to deliver something that could have provided our state with confidence, increased tourism and economic drive in the Commonwealth Games. It wasted that. That is one of the committees that I was on. It wasted money on machete bins that we know our local people could have potentially made for a lot less. It was a joke out in the regions, these machete bins for honest people to put their machetes in, not for the crooks and the thugs. Leasing pot plants – I mean, for goodness sake. This government should take a good hard look at itself and really start to implement the recommendations from this inquiry.

I thank Ms Crozier for again relentlessly driving the issues that are important. She has been whingeing, because we are whingeing on behalf of Victorians. We are whingeing on behalf of the real issues that matter. They are not pot plants. They are not burgeoning blowouts. We are standing up for all Victorians. And I will continue to whinge, because the whingeing matters to these people and our people.

 Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (11:44): I am also pleased to rise and at the outset wish to firmly acknowledge, with my gratitude, our wonderful paramedics and the incredible work that they do. Like many people in this place, I know several paramedics myself and really appreciate the opportunity to hear from them about the good, the bad, the issues and what needs to be fixed in the ambulance service. That is something that I very much greatly appreciate, and it is important to acknowledge that.

There are a number of points in this that I do wish to come to, but I think one of the points that Mr McIntosh and I believe Ms Ermacora as well made was acknowledging that since we came into office – and yes, it has been a long time since the Liberals were in office, and there is probably a reason for that – in the last 12 years there has been a 50 per cent increase in the on-road paramedics and on-road staff working in Ambulance Victoria. There is a considerable investment – I will come back to some other things later if I have the time – but there are some very important points I want to make on that. We have continued and we will continue to make the investments to support our paramedics and the extremely vital work that they do. In my own electorate just a couple of years ago we opened the new Clyde North ambulance branch, which has already been put to great use and is well utilised by Ambulance Victoria and by that local community as well. It is very good to see that investment flowing through into those better health outcomes for the community.

We also saw in the most recent state budget more significant investment in the ambulance service. This was raised and received as evidence in the Legal and Social Issues Committee inquiry. I know that the non-government members were keen to not highlight this, which comes to my point that the government members of the inquiry were absolutely prepared to look at the issues, absolutely prepared to dive into them and see what is wrong. We want to so we can make things better. But the attitude of some members to dismiss completely out of hand the investments that have and are being made does that whole process a disservice.

I note that the government members in a minority report were very, very conscious that, whilst we completely acknowledge, for example, the cultural issues that have existed in Ambulance Victoria management for some time, we also acknowledge that there are a number of people working in that organisation who have been working their butts off, frankly, to drive that organisational change. The way in which Ms Crozier has framed this motion and the very first few words in her motion again undermine the work of those people in the organisation who are trying to make that change and see that change happen. We should be acknowledging the green shoots where they are and providing support to those in the ambulance service who are driving the changes that we are seeing. For example, as we saw in finding 35 of the report, we are seeing that Ambulance Victoria consistently meets its performance targets for high-quality and safe care, including in the metrics of transport performance, cardiac survival and patient experience. We know we have one of the strongest cardiac responses in the world both from our health service and the hospital system more broadly and in very large part from the incredible work that our paramedics do.

It is in that spirit that I wish to highlight that in the most recent state budget we did see significant investment to continue to improve the service, including in extending four stations across regional Victoria to 24-hour operation, at Cobram, Mansfield, Yarrawonga and – I am surprised that Ms Bath did not want to mention this – in Korumburra as well, very good investments. Also there is the ongoing continuation of a program converting single crews to dual crews in 15 units across the state and four new rural peak period units to ensure for all parts of Victoria, particularly as we see from these examples in regional Victoria, where some of those gaps have been more evident, that we are making that investment.

As others have said on this side, the operational decisions of Ambulance Victoria are not playthings for government to tinker with, just as it is not for police or for any of our other emergency services. Political control of an organisation like that is not a good road to be going down. We are providing Ambulance Victoria with the investments and with the supports so that they can do their job. On that, I would also note that another large topic of conversation in the inquiry was in relation to and touched again on staff culture. Many of those issues stemmed from rostering practices, from a number of issues with payroll and in particular from end-of-shift management practices.

As part of the new enterprise agreement that we now have in place, we have seen reforms to those end-of-shift management practices. These are very early figures, but we want to see that progress continue. The early figures show that for those staff who are taking up that option to not have their shifts extended when there are other cases, 89 per cent of the time that is able to be honoured within the hour. Providing that staff welfare and that staff wellbeing and that stability around rostering is something that will very much contribute to improved morale and improved health outcomes by supporting our paramedics to do the work that they do best so that they can support Victorians.

Ms Crozier also made some comments referring to the election this year and saying that she hopes that the Liberals will win. I am sure we all felt what can only be described as a collective shiver down the spines of paramedics across this state, because they remember what happened the last time Ms Crozier’s colleagues were in power. It was Mr Davis, who sits over there and who is still in this place, who was in charge. He was the Minister for Health at that time, the same minister that drove ambulance workers and paramedics in this state to despair and to strike, and he then attacked them. He attacked them. He called paramedics militant thugs, and for that he apparently was not reprimanded. He is still –

Members interjecting.

Michael GALEA: I am glad to hear, Ms Crozier, that you disown the comments of Mr Davis. I hope that you condemn those comments in your closing remarks. You should condemn those remarks, because they are disgusting things to say about people that do incredible life-saving work. I will take your condemnation of Mr Davis’s comments, and I hope you reiterate that when you have an opportunity to respond to this debate. I know at the last election when you put forward some policies you could not get a single health worker to stand with you. But if you are in that space again, I certainly hope that you will treat our paramedics with far greater respect than Mr Davis ever did, because they deserve that, and they remember exactly what it was like under the last Liberal government, when they had a government that reviled them. They deserve better than that.

I am curious about some of the other tactics that have been deployed. Mr McGowan always has a creative approach to social media posts, and it would be great if he was in the chamber at the moment to perhaps explain going around to an ambulance branch, knocking on the door and then doing a video complaining about those paramedics not being in there. Frankly it is an insult to those paramedics, because he should know all too well that they are out on jobs. They are out doing their work. I do not know what his approach to this is, but why would you be expecting people to be just sitting around waiting for things to happen? That is not how ambulance paramedics work. It is not how firefighters work. It is not how police work. Their role is to be out in the community responding. We saw a number of comments from paramedics on that post, pointing that out to him. I know from speaking to several people that paramedics and people – as you quoted before, Ms Crozier – in the union were very upset about that post and the way it portrayed paramedics, because they are out doing that hard work and going around and knocking on the door and filming it for a social media post does them a complete disservice.

There are, as Mr Batchelor went into some detail on, many other things that we are doing to support the broader health system and support, by connection, ambulance services in this state. In the inquiry we heard evidence about the Victorian Virtual Emergency Department, which is working with Ambulance Victoria in triaging in many cases and improving those triaging processes. We had some really great commentary from the experts who set the system up in Victoria. The Liberal members were asking those experts if they had ever heard of a VED in operation anywhere in the world – and it is happening here; they set it up in Victoria – but aside from that we were glad that the Liberal members could learn from that.

I note that Liberal members have been out helping me to promote the new Cranbourne Community Hospital, a terrific day hospital, a terrific community hospital in the electorate, and promoting the urgent care clinic as well in Narre Warren. Urgent care clinics were an initiative of the Labor government in Victoria, along with the New South Wales government at the time. Initiatives to improve our health care system will continue to expand.

 Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (11:55): Quite an incredible rant from Mr Galea, who spoke a lot about different things but completely sidestepped the substance of this motion. I rise to proudly support Ms Crozier’s motion – one that I was amazed that Ms Ermacora used as an opportunity to speak about climate change and to say that we were cheeky to whinge. Now, let me point out what she thinks we are cheeky to whinge about. The latest publicly available data from the Victorian Agency for Health Information shows a continued failure to meet ambulance response targets. That is not whinging, to bring that up. Another part that she said was whinging: ambulances, including mobile intensive care units, were not staffed during heatwave conditions due to budget shortfalls. Unbelievable to say that is whinging. Another point that she said was whinging: according to the ambulance union, from Friday 23 January to Thursday 29 January 2026 stations with unstaffed ambulances included – there is a whole heap that I could list here, but I am just going to list the ones that are in my area, because that is what I am here to talk about – Belgrave, Mount Martha, Rosebud and Sorrento.

I think we cannot trivialise or minimise the substance of this motion, because it is incredibly important. It is twofold really – well, it is multifaceted, but I am going to talk about two aspects of it. The first one is, obviously, if you live in Belgrave, Mount Martha, Rosebud or Sorrento, during those shifts you could not get an ambulance.

Tom McIntosh interjected.

Renee HEATH: Mr McIntosh just said Rosebud has got the best response times in the state – not when it is not staffed due to budget shortfalls. The other thing I want to point out is that the government, when they talk to motions like this, somehow try to pit us against ambulance workers, healthcare workers and paramedics. I want to make it clear: we are placing the failure of this system squarely at the feet of the government, because it is you who are unable to pay for these. We have incredible healthcare workers, we have incredible paramedics. That is exactly what the substance of this motion is about, because there are paramedics who either are unable to work due to your budget shortfalls or, if they are able to work, have sometimes been sent out on their own without a support person, without another paramedic. Ms Ermacora said – and I thought it was actually something that was true, was good – ‘If you cannot maintain your own safety, you cannot help others.’ It is very hard to maintain your own safety when you are sent out on your own into these situations. Not only that, you are not able to transfer patients.

This is what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the people in my area in Belgrave, in Mount Martha, in Rosebud, in Sorrento. Not only that, I have spoken about parents in Pakenham –

Tom McIntosh: Who is the local member in Sorrento?

Renee HEATH: At least he lives in his area, Mr McIntosh. We have spoken about people that have not been able to get an ambulance, so they have had to –

Members interjecting.

Renee HEATH: It is actually quite insulting when I am hearing people laughing about such a serious issue, but anyway. The parents in Pakenham had to drive their own child in a critical condition to a hospital because they could not get an ambulance. That is shocking, and that is the fault of your government. There is the lady who I spoke about recently who had such severe delays that they led to complications.

Efficient emergency services and an efficient ambulance service is needed to take pressure off a healthcare system that is on the brink. I just want to be clear, in the minute that I have left before question time, that you can twist and you can turn this all you want, but the substance of this motion says this: we are on the side of paramedics, we are on the side of Victorians who want to get an ambulance and this is your failure because you have not been able to manage money, and because of that, every Victorian is suffering.

Business interrupted pursuant to sessional orders.