Wednesday, 1 April 2026

 Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (17:40): I rise tonight to make a statement on the Alfred Health Annual Report 2024–25, which was tabled in October last year, because Alfred Health, as it was then known, runs some truly great and really important public healthcare facilities in the Southern Metropolitan Region. Obviously we have got the Alfred, home to Australia’s largest intensive care unit, a major tertiary and trauma hospital that serves both our community and the broader Victorian community with distinction. We have got Caulfield Hospital, which runs a range of services but has a particular emphasis on rehabilitation and outpatient services, and we have Sandringham Hospital, which is busy and has a range of services that it runs, including a range of clinics, some important maternity services and also emergency and urgent care services.

These hospitals provide crucial services to the local community. I want to thank everyone who is part of providing health care to the local community: the doctors, the nurses, the administrative staff, the orderlies, the assistants – everyone who keeps these hospitals running to deliver the services and the health care that members of the community so rightly deserve and expect. They do a great job day in, day out, and I want to pay tribute to their efforts here today.

The wonderful hospitals that I have mentioned have been backed by Labor. Right across our state this Labor government has been investing in our public health system, has been investing in public hospitals. We have been providing those who work there with the support that they need but also investing in the infrastructure that is part of these great facilities to ensure that they have the world-class facilities that the community expects. Things like the medical equipment replacement program, the engineering infrastructure replacement program and the Metropolitan Health Infrastructure Fund have resulted in new and upgraded equipment and facilities being installed across the Alfred, Caulfield and Sandringham hospitals.

There has been a $292 million investment into the Alfred’s trauma centre, a nation-leading trauma centre. We have upgraded the Alfred recently to deliver two major pieces of equipment: an MRI scanner for faster scans for more patients and a new stereotactic navigation system to support the neurosurgery team. In 2024 there was $4 million in funding to the Alfred to upgrade operating room equipment, including anaesthetic machines, operating tables and cardiac monitoring equipment. In 2024–25 the Alfred received $118 million to maintain its operating theatres, intensive care and inpatient units. In Caulfield, the Caulfield Hospital had a refurbished inpatient unit in 2018, and at Sandringham we saw the completion last year of a brand new outpatient facility, which is delivering shorter patient wait times and better service infrastructure. When you look at the range of services that are being provided in these hospitals, from acute emergency to inpatient and outpatient services, Labor has been investing in these facilities over our time in government.

We have been supporting the workforce in these hospitals, most recently obviously with a significant increase in pay to our hardworking nurses. Places like Sandringham Hospital are also benefiting from the investments that the Commonwealth is making into better primary health care through the provision of urgent care clinics. There is a partnership urgent care clinic at the Alfred, the Prahran urgent care clinic, that is delivering urgent care services, bulk-billed at no cost to anyone who walks through the door on the grounds of the Alfred Hospital, really changing the way that locals are able to access urgent and critical care in the community.

That is accompanied by the investments that the Labor government has made to things like the virtual emergency department, free to those who need it, with funding being tripled over the next three years. And there is a brand new women’s health clinic opening up in Prahran. Add that to the Chemist Care Now program, which is providing more timely and cheaper access to medicines and prescriptions at more convenient locations in our community, you can see how Victorian Labor is building a modern healthcare system that is responding to the needs of Victorians, delivering record numbers of surgeries and making it easier for Victorians to get the health care that they need when they need it.