Tuesday, 21 June 2022

Health system

Ms CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (19:20): (1996) My adjournment matter this evening is for the attention of the Minister for Health.

Our health system is in crisis. Nurses and midwives are holding it together with redeployment, overtime, extra shifts and double shifts.

I agree with that statement. That comes straight from the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF) and the secretary, Lisa Fitzpatrick, and she is right. She knows that the health system is in crisis. It is dire. Other clinicians and senior people that work within Victoria’s public health system have said it is dire and it is dangerous. We have got senior clinicians walking away from our hospitals and our health services because they cannot do it any longer. This is extremely concerning. We have got code yellows that are happening all the time in regional Victoria. There just is not the capacity. With those hospitals, there are not the beds and there are not the staff. This is years of underinvestment and mismanagement by the Andrews Labor government. This is not just confined to regional Victoria, as we know. In metropolitan Melbourne there is a 000 crisis. Right across the state there is ambulance ramping, and there is a lack of capacity in our metropolitan hospitals too.

The government brought in nurse-to-patient ratios, and this year they were to roll out further throughout aged care. They were going to roll out into palliative care in inpatient units, and as I said, in July this year the 50 per cent rule was to be removed from the afternoon shifts for residential aged care. So all of these ratio rules that were put in place under legislation, which the coalition supported, are not being met. The Premier was out there today saying that there are significant pressures in the system and that the suspension of ratios has occurred. That was backed up a few days ago when the ANMF secretary also said that patient ratios were not being met. The action I seek from the minister is that he provides how long ratios have been suspended for and in which health services they have been suspended. I think every nurse, every hospital, every clinician and every Victorian needs to understand the full extent of the problem, and the only way we can fully understand it is if the government is transparent and provides that information. I am looking forward to the health minister providing that as a matter of urgency.