Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Urban Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to raise concerns in this parliament about serious cuts to the mobile intensive care ambulance unit, based at Frankston, which serves the Mornington Peninsula. The MICA unit is fundamental to protecting people on the Mornington Peninsula. The population of Frankston has the highest concentration of seniors in Victoria, the electorate of Flinders has the fifth highest concentration of seniors in Australia, and the particular stretch from Dromana to McCrae to Rosebud to Tootgarook and to Rye on the Mornington Peninsula has perhaps the highest concentration of seniors in all of Australia.

What we see here are three things. Firstly, we have serious cuts to the MICA program. In particular, the Victorian state government has announced cuts to the two-person MICA ambulance based at Frankston. This covers the Mornington Peninsula. Instead of having a MICA unit, we will see the replacement of the two-person stretcher-bearing ambulance with one person in a sedan. This will be a consultation process rather than an emergency unit. For people facing cardiac issues or other forms of emergency, for children who are in dangerous situations and for parents who worry about their children and their own older parents, this is a real problem and a genuine risk. It is not a confected issue. It will have an impact on lives and on the perception of security and health, which are fundamental to people’s ability to live comfortably in their own areas.

Secondly, what will the impact of this fundamental cut be? What we see is the state government saying that it will provide greater flexibility and a greater ‘geographic spread’ of MICA paramedics. Yet it is local doctors, the paramedics themselves, the CFA—which has to deal as a fall-back with many of these emergencies—the SES and local residents who have all protested. These are the people on the front line who are facing the consequences of the cut to the MICA unit. What they have said—in numerous letters to the local papers, in approaches to the state government, in public statements and in meetings—is very simple: lives may be lost, people may suffer and personal insecurity will rise. These are not my words. These are the words of the SES, the CFA, the MICA paramedics themselves and local community members—people who simply want to know that they have medical and emergency security in their own town for their own families and for their own lives. This will have a real and significant impact.

Thirdly, this falls into a broader pattern of neglect by the state government in relation to health facilities on the Mornington Peninsula. Eighteen months ago, we saw the state government’s closure of Rosebud Hospital’s birthing unit. What that meant was very simple. Mums who needed emergency assistance through the birthing unit would not be able to receive it from the lower peninsula. They would have to travel—in many cases perhaps for 30 to 40 minutes, rather than for five or 10 minutes—to receive that support from Frankston. Having been born in Frankston, a newborn baby could be put in a car and sent with its mum within 12 hours of its birth all the way down the peninsula. This is one of the real impacts that will be borne by the most vulnerable in our society—newborns, but more specifically newborns on their first day of life being evicted by the health system. That is not what we believe in as a society, that is not what we raise taxes for and that is not how we should be approaching the most vulnerable in our society.

So we have a real issue here of cuts to the MICA program impacting on the local community, which falls within a broader pattern of neglect of the Mornington Peninsula by the state government in relation to health care and health facilities. I respectfully but categorically say: do not cut the MICA unit; restore the balance that was there; and stand up for the Mornington Peninsula.