Wednesday, 26 August 2026

 Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (19:14): (2733) My adjournment matter this evening is for the attention of the Premier. The action I seek is for the Premier to act with integrity and instruct his Minister for Health to immediately release the now long-overdue Victorian Agency for Health Information data for the March to June quarter. The Premier came to office just four weeks ago, promising Victorians a new direction. ‘I will do things differently,’ he trumpeted. ‘In my government, integrity will not be optional,’ he declared. Yesterday, talking about the Suburban Rail Loop, he went further. He told Victorians: ‘I respect your money.’ Today the Auditor-General has given Victorians a very different picture of how this government operates. A secret 1 per cent levy was built into public transport fares to help fund the Suburban Rail Loop. Victorians were not told. The $8 billion levy was hidden from public scrutiny. And who was the public transport minister when this secret levy was approved in August 2021? The man who now promises Victorians transparency and integrity and says, ‘I respect your money,’ Premier Ben Carroll. This government has made an art form of delay, deception and deliberate concealment when the truth is politically inconvenient. I honestly do not know how those in government can justify their deceit and their shameless disregard for the people they are supposed to serve. This is another test of your new Premier’s commitment to transparency.

The June quarter hospital performance data from the Victorian Agency for Health Information, VAHI, exists to provide Victorians with information about the quality, safety and performance of their public health system. It says its performance results are updated quarterly. The June quarter ended 57 days ago, yet Victorians are still waiting. The latest data has 68,116 Victorians waiting for planned surgery, 4000 more than three months earlier and 8000 more than the same time the previous year. So where are the June quarter figures? What has happened to that waiting list? How many more Victorians are now waiting in pain for the surgery they need? After today’s extraordinary revelations from the Auditor-General, Victorians are entitled to ask an even more troubling question: what is in these figures that the government does not want them to see? You cannot have a Premier preaching transparency on Monday, promising to respect taxpayers money on Tuesday and then expect Victorians to simply trust you when important government data disappears from view. You cannot promise a new government while practising the same old politics of secrecy, and you certainly cannot claim that integrity is not optional while treating transparency as though it is – no more delay, no more excuses, no more hiding behind weasel words.