Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this afternoon to raise my serious concerns about what's happening to the health system in Victoria, and I raise this because my local communities are raising it with me. They are deeply, deeply concerned about forced board amalgamations and cuts to health. In particular, the healthcare services at Timboon, Apollo Bay and Lorne are deeply worried that the joint services that they run, those services which are funded by the federal government and by the Victorian state government, are going to see forced amalgamations and cuts to their services.

So I have written to the Minister for Health and Aged Care, Mark Butler, and I've written to the Minister for Aged Care, Anika Wells, asking them two things: please rule out cuts to any funding and, from a federal government point of view for these jointly funded services, please rule out any forced board amalgamations. We do not want to have our healthcare services dictated to us by an entity in Geelong. We want local community boards which know and understand the local community making sure we're delivering those healthcare services.

The other concern—and this is a major concern—is with regard to ambulance services and the support that we need to provide to our paramedics. In my local community, that of the Southern Grampians in Hamilton, I've had the local paramedics come and see me because they are deeply concerned about the pressures being placed on them and their resources. What is occurring at the moment is that, for 13 hours, over the period of the night, there is only one service available from Hamilton to look after the whole Southern Grampians area. If there is a second fatality or a second need for our paramedics to go to an incident, sadly there is no crew for 13 hours throughout the night.

So we've launched a petition to say to the Victorian state government that this is clearly not good enough. We need to be able to provide the resources to support a second crew, so that we can ensure that those community members can be provided with assistance when they're in need of that important work that our paramedics offer. We have to make sure that that resourcing is there. Please, everyone in the Southern Grampians Shire, sign that petition and make sure we send a clear message to the Victorian state government. Support our paramedics.