Shadow Health Minister Zak Kirkup has accused the Premier of lying in a bid to cover up Western Australia’s broken health system as ambulance ramping reached record levels in September.
And Mr Kirkup has called on the Labor Government to spend some of its $2.5 billion surplus to fix a health crisis which is putting the lives of West Australians at risk.
“The Premier has been caught out lying, trying to blame ambulance crews cleaning ambulances for these record levels of ramping,” Mr Kirkup said.
“That is absolute nonsense. As a volunteer ambulance officer I can tell you that cleaning down an ambulance and patient paperwork is not included in ramping statistics. Ramping figures only include the time paramedics wait to hand over a patient.
“So the Premier is either lying, just like his Health Minister, who said exactly the same thing last month, or they don’t know how the system operates, which is mind-boggling.
“Our health system is in freefall. Ambulance ramping hours for September were 3074 – the worst figures recorded for a month in WA history.
“But rather than spend money to fix it, the Labor Government would rather stockpile $2.5 billion for their election campaign. The public should be outraged that the government is putting politics before the health of all West Australians.
“It is unacceptable that Labor won’t act on this and they continue to allow sick West Australians who desperately need medical attention to be stuck in the back of ambulances for hours on end. They need to fix this now.
“We need to see long-term investment in our State’s ambulance service. The two-year deal announced today is not long enough.
“We need to better resource our health system and expand our emergency departments. Clearly, there aren’t enough beds in our hospitals. Labor need to fix this now.”