Tuesday, 2 June 2026

 Harriet SHING (Eastern Victoria – Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Health, Minister for Water) (14:11): We know how important it is for Victorians to get the advice, support and care that they need as soon as possible. Our dedicated health workforce continues to provide extraordinary care to Victorians amidst sustained demand for planned surgeries. The latest data shows the continued incredible efforts of our health services and ambulance services amid continued high demand. Victoria is on track to deliver 210,000 planned surgeries for 2025–26. One hundred per cent of category 1 urgent patients are treated within the recommended time, and 84.5 per cent of planned surgery patients are treated within the recommended time – that is up 2.2 percentage points from last year. Emergency departments continue to deliver rapid care, with a median wait time of just 14 minutes and with the most serious conditions prioritised immediately. We have also seen improvements in time to treatment in quarter 3, with median wait times for category 3 patients improving by three days and all categories by five days compared to the same time last year.

But there is always more work to do. We have a waitlist of around 68,000 patients here in Victoria, from the day that they are first referred to surgery to the day that they are discharged, as compared to around 92,812 on the waitlist in New South Wales. That is why we are reforming the way in which Victorians can be assessed by and access specialist care with a new plan that makes care fairer and more equitable no matter where they live. That includes a specialist care reform blueprint developed alongside experts to make sure we can make the system easier to navigate. We will always support our hospitals and health workers, because that is what we do. When the Melton hospital opens in 2029, we will have built 12 new hospitals. Coincidentally, that is the same number of hospitals that when in power the Liberal coalition closed. We have grown our health workforce and we will continue to do so. We continue to invest in people – (Time expired)