The Victorian Parliament’s upper house has passed a motion brought forward by the Liberal and Nationals to establish an inquiry into the performance, workplace culture, and procurement practices of Ambulance Victoria.
The Nationals’ Member for Euroa, Annabelle Cleeland, said the inquiry was an important step to addressing serious issues within the Ambulance Victoria system.
“I’m pleased that despite Labor’s objections, the Upper House of the Victorian Parliament supported this important inquiry,” Ms Cleeland said.
“There have been major issues with ambulance response times, particularly within my region, as well as concerns over ramping outside hospital emergency departments, a lack of clinical oversight, late dispatching, patient transport, and ongoing delays when it comes to answering calls.”
Ms Cleeland has held recent meetings with local paramedics, listening to their concerns about Victoria’s broken ambulance system.
“One concerning aspect brought to my attention was the lack of clinical oversight and accuracy when it comes to determining emergency callouts for ambulances,” Ms Cleeland said.
“We are already working with such finite resources and a lack of specialist paramedics in much of the region, so hearing that there was a lack of accuracy or detail being provided to paramedics was deeply concerning.
“This leads to late dispatches, resulting in the hours of paramedics being stretched too far for long, non-emergency drives, when they should be finishing up their day or handling code 1 emergencies.”
The most recent Ambulance Victoria data indicates alarming shortcomings when it comes to response times for code 1 emergencies across the region (the most serious and urgent cases).
Ambulance Victoria’s official response time targets are that 85 per cent of code 1 emergencies are responded to within 15 minutes.
However, in Benalla just 63.9 per cent of ambulances responded within this time, in Mitchell Shire it was just 55.5 per cent, and in the Strathbogie Shire just 32.7 per cent of ambulances arrived within the 15-minute target.
The vote for the inquiry was held in the Legislative Council and passed 23 to 13.
The Legal and Social Issues Committee will inquire into these and other related matters and report back to Parliament by August 31, 2025.
