Tuesday, 12 May 2026

 Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (12:37): (1314) My question is to the Minister for Ambulance Services. Minister, Ava is 14 years old and was injured playing football on 26 April. She sustained breaks to her lower femur and upper tibia, requires an ACL reconstruction and meniscus repair, an MCL to be replaced by donor ligaments, has severe bone bruising and her calf muscle requires reattachment. Understandably, as a result of her injuries, Ava was in considerable pain and went into shock. Her parents called an ambulance and were told one would be sent. After 40 minutes they called again, only to be told a nurse would call back as an ambulance had not yet been dispatched. After waiting yet again another 40 minutes, they phoned back and were told there was no ambulance coming and they had to drive to hospital themselves. How is it acceptable that a young girl in severe pain and shock was denied access to the emergency care she so clearly required?

 Harriet SHING (Eastern Victoria – Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Health, Minister for Water) (12:38): Thank you, Ms Crozier, for your question. I hope that Ava is doing well, and I hope that her family has the supports around her to assist Ava to recover from what sound like really significant and painful injuries. Every day our paramedics respond to about a thousand code 1 call-outs – that is, lights and sirens. We also see around 300,000 additional drawdowns on the system on top of the 000 calls that are made every single day. We want to make sure that the sickest Victorians get the help that they need while we assist paramedics to get back onto the road sooner. This means that when people call 000, they will be, as a result of our investments, transferred in relation to those secondary triage processes to the Ambulance Victoria –

David Davis interjected.

Harriet SHING: I am going to take up that interjection, Mr Davis. How dare you refer to those paramedics and clinicians who work to assist people through a secondary triage process to provide them with assistance around the sorts of supports that are necessary and appropriate for them as being ‘bumped off’? This just highlights the disrespect that you have for paramedics.

Georgie Crozier: On a point of order, President, the minister has had a go at Mr Davis’s interjection. I would ask you to get her to come back to this very important issue that I have raised around the failure of Ava not being able to get an ambulance when she required one.

The PRESIDENT: I believe the minister was being relevant before she responded to the interjection. I ask people to refrain from interjecting. The minister to continue and to ignore the interjection.

Harriet SHING: I will ignore the interjection, but what I hope that Victorians will not ignore is the fact that the opposition went to war with paramedics when they were last in government. What we know is that a whole-system response assists more calls to be able to be managed, more people to be able to get the supports that they need when they call for help. I do want to take this opportunity to thank every single one of the paramedics who work so hard every day to respond to that demand. That is why we have grown our workforce by about 50 per cent and invested a record $2 billion in ambulance services. I am not going to comment on individual cases, and I would hope, Ms Crozier, that you do not bring them into this place to make points that do not actually relate to providing comfort to a family who is looking for it.

As part of last week’s budget we have built on the investment with an additional $50.7 million supporting, as I said, secondary triage, improving call and dispatch and delivering those innovative solutions aimed at getting paramedics back on the road sooner. We are also expanding the Victorian Virtual Emergency Department, which receives about a thousand calls every day; urgent care clinics and Nurse-on-Call; as well as the standards for timely ambulance and emergency care. We will continue to invest in our paramedics. The truth is you will not.

 Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (12:41): Ava’s father wrote to the minister on 2 May highlighting this very issue. How dare you pointscore against his requirements about his daughter’s needs when he raised them with you and has asked me to raise them with you in the Parliament, which is exactly what I am doing. Shame on you. Because you are only just a part-time minister, you are not looking at your correspondence properly.

I ask: your government has for years promised to fix the system, yet ambulance response times remain well below the government’s own targets, and sometimes there is no ambulance available at all, as in this case. In fact the government has not even released the latest data, which is now 12 days overdue – again, a lack of transparency. This government is just appalling. Why would any Victorian trust you to fix the problems that are plaguing our ambulance system, like Ava’s father expects to be done?

 Harriet SHING (Eastern Victoria – Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Health, Minister for Water) (12:43): Ms Crozier, if you had started your question by indicating that about nine days ago Ava’s dad had written to me, that would have been a very different conversation that we would have been having in this chamber.

Georgie Crozier interjected.

Harriet SHING: Ms Crozier, when the coalition was in government – and you would remember this – you withheld data on ambulance reporting. In fact you did not report on it at all. You did not support paramedics then, and you do not support them now. You provided evidence of legislation that was riddled with holes, egregious failures in the system that you oversaw the decline of –

Renee Heath: On a point of order, President, question time is not a time for the government to attack the opposition, so I ask you to bring her back to the question.

The PRESIDENT: That is a correct point of order, but it is not a one-way street. If there is commentary within the question, I think the minister has a right to respond.

Harriet SHING: As I said at the outset, Ms Crozier, if you had gotten to your feet today and asked for assistance in understanding what had occurred, then I would have been able to provide you with an assurance that I am very happy to have that conversation with you. But, Ms Crozier, you are not interested in conversations; you are interested in pointscoring. I will work through that process with Ava’s dad directly while you keep on attacking from the sidelines.

 Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (12:44): I move:

That the minister’s response be taken into consideration on the next day of meeting.

Motion agreed to.