Book 8 - Parliament of Victoria

GOVERNMENT: ELECTION COMMITMENTS
Wednesday, 1 June 2011 COUNCIL 1627
No-one really believes Labor, because in government
all it did was try to spin its way out of doing nothing. In
effect it has been caught. One of the greatest
head-in-the-sand tricks on the part of the previous
Labor government was what it did to the health sector
in relation to waiting lists. In the first instance the
waiting lists in the public domain were bad enough, but
this is the first government that has ever meticulously,
deliberately and deceitfully invented the concept of
hidden waiting lists — that is, waiting lists that people
go on before they go onto a waiting list.
We have the numbers. Thousands of people in Bendigo
are on the outpatient waiting list. They do not even
have the opportunity to go and see a surgeon in order to
get onto an official waiting list. Up to 2000 people will
wait on another waiting list. The Leader of the
Opposition, Daniel Andrews, who was the Minister for
Health at the time, oversaw a situation whereby the use
of outpatient waiting lists and all of the other hidden
waiting lists in effect meant that the people of Victoria
were never really sure of the extent of waiting list
numbers in the public health system. The government
of those opposite oversaw that deceit, and it refused to
even acknowledge that it had created a set of hidden
waiting lists.
Further accentuating that problem was the issue of
ambulance ramping — that is, ambulances forced to
line up on ramps at the back of hospital emergency
departments. Again when we were in opposition the
leadership came from David Davis, who said, ‘We
cannot fix the problem overnight, but we will publish
the extent of ramping. We will put it on the website if
ambulances are forced to go on bypass mode or forced
to park one behind the other’.
In Bendigo we quite often see up to eight or nine
ambulances at the back of a hospital, trying to get their
patients unloaded and into the system, because they do
not have the opportunity to go on bypass. At least we
have identified this issue. We have clearly stated in an
open and transparent manner that we will effectively
highlight and publish the extent of ramping so that
everybody is clear about the extent of this problem, and
then with the influx of 300 additional paramedics we
are putting into the system we will work out ways to
alleviate the problem.
It is a bit rich for Mr Jennings, as a former minister, to
come into this house and say, ‘The extra $102 million
you have set aside in your budget for the Bendigo
hospital redevelopment is actually not in this year’s
budget; it is not even in the forward estimates’. We are
going to spend an extra $102 million to build the
hospital at a total cost of $632 million, as opposed to
Labor’s $512 million — sorry, $530 million; you have
to add up the contributions over various years to get the
final sums.
Hon. M. P. Pakula interjected.
Mr DRUM — Mr Pakula, members of the
opposition might have a shred of credibility if they once
thanked the coalition for, in opposition, committing to
$632 million for the hospital. Local members for the
seats of Bendigo East and Bendigo West in the other
place are effectively calling for the government to scrap
the additional $102 million and build a cheaper hospital
for the city of Bendigo. If Mr Pakula thinks that is good
representation of Bendigo, then he is different from
most members of Parliament. The two members of
Parliament representing Bendigo are the only members
of Parliament to ever advocate for $102 million to leave
their electorates and be spent elsewhere.
If Mr Pakula thinks that is good representation, he
should stick with Jacinta Allan and Maree Edwards, the
members for Bendigo East and Bendigo West in the
other place, because that is exactly what they are doing.
It is unbelievable — a set of Laborites, believing in
what Labor does, believing that Labor is
unquestionable and believing that nobody else could
ever build anything to rival the brilliance of the former
Labor government. It is so arrogant. The process
Mr Pakula’s government went through in relation to
that Bendigo project beggars belief.
I move on to schools. Labor members have effectively
said, ‘We have an issue with a lack of school funding’.
Again this is quite laughable. All the members on the
government benches are being inundated by principals
and school council presidents coming to us and in effect
saying that prior to the last election they were led to
believe that they were going to get a new school or a
new hall or an extension to their science lab or a new
library — money for this or that — —
Hon. M. P. Pakula — Because they were election
commitments.
Mr DRUM — No, Mr Pakula, they were not
election commitments; they were just winks and nods.
The former government said, ‘Keep quiet, get your
merge done and we will come good with the money’,
but there was nothing at all in the forward estimates.
Hon. M. P. Pakula — Because they were election
commitments; do you understand the difference?
Mr DRUM — No, they were not election
commitments, Mr Pakula; they were simply winks and
nods. Schools throughout the system have gone ahead