Barely a week goes by without an article in one of the regional newspapers in my electorate of Western Victoria Region detailing the Napthine government’s complete and utter failure to maintain a first-class health system in Victoria.
Whether it is hospital wait times, failure to provide the promised 800 hospital beds, crowded emergency departments or an ambulance service that constantly fails its own response time targets, the Napthine government has totally and utterly failed the people of Victoria.
On 10 September the residents of Geelong opened their newspapers to read the heading ‘Ambos queue for two hours’. That was far from the first time the Geelong community had read headlines similar to this in the Geelong Advertiser.
On the particular morning detailed in the article, seven ambulances were waiting outside the Geelong emergency department, including one forced to park across the road and another on a footpath. On that day, the longest waiting time for an ambulance was 117 minutes. That is totally unacceptable.
For more than three years the Napthine government has been putting Victorian lives at risk with its systematic failure of Victoria’s health system.
The Napthine government has ripped hundreds of millions of dollars out of the health system, broken its promise on extra hospital beds, treated ambulance paramedics in a disgraceful manner during pay negotiations and essentially sat on its hands while our health system has broken down.
With less than three months until the state election, it is clear that the Napthine government simply does not have the ability or the desire to fix the complete mess it has created. Victorians do not deserve a substandard health system.
Victorians deserve far better than this Napthine government.