Ms ROSOL (Bass) – Honourable Speaker, on Monday morning I had the unfortunate circumstance of needing to call an ambulance for a member of my family. I want to express my thanks to the paramedic who came to us at the time and provided amazing service. Many thanks to Seb, it was a community paramedic who came to our house and assisted us. He was able to make an assessment to provide treatment and then came back four hours later to check up and see how we were going. We were very grateful, and I am pleased to report that my family member is back to good health now after receiving excellent treatment.
In thanking the paramedic who came to our place, I acknowledge the many incredible health workers that we have across our state who work across many different services, whether it is Ambulance Tasmania or in our hospitals, in mental health services, in community health, in the Child Health and Parenting Service. I am sure I have missed some of the areas there, but there are many different areas of our health service where we have incredible staff providing excellent care and doing their best to meet the needs of Tasmanians across the state who need healthcare.
In saying that, I want to raise concerns because I know that many of our health staff across Tasmania are working in very difficult, stressful circumstances. We know that there have been efficiency dividends and budget-saving measures that have been applied. We know that the government is assessing job by job whether vacancies can be filled, and they have been refusing to fill vacancies. All of this increases the pressures on our health system and increases the pressures on our staff.
We know that there are staff, particularly in our emergency departments, who are in very stressful situations, working understaffed on many shifts and this is creating incredible pressure for them.
In this week when the Budget is be handed down, we will be able to look and see what the government is investing in. We will be looking closely to see what the government is investing in and the impact that it will make on health services, and the impact that it will have on our incredible health staff.
I also acknowledge that, in our situation, we had a very timely arrival of the ambulance, excellent treatment, and a great outcome, but, for many Tasmanians, they have to wait a long time – longer than is advisable to have an ambulance arrive. There are Tasmanians who wait for a very long time in emergency departments for treatment. While our situation was good, for many people, that does not happen, so we continue to raise this and bring it to public attention. Our health services are incredibly important for all of us and we need to make sure that they are available for everybody at the time that they are needed, in a timely way, so that they can all have good outcomes.
The Greens will be watching that. We continue to call for the investment that is needed, not just in dollar figures that can be claimed to be amazing big levels of investment, but to look at the need and ensure that the needs of all Tasmanians are being met.
