The Victorian Government has blocked the Opposition from debating a bill to legislate for the release of hospital, paramedics and firefighters’ performance data.
Labor wanted to enforce the quarterly release of emergency services data.
But with only two sitting days left before the election and a big legislative backlog, Premier Denis Napthine branded the move a stunt.
“This is a political stunt, there is no real intention from the Labor Party to pass this legislation,” Dr Napthine said.
“If they wanted to pass such legislation, they had three-and-half years to introduce this sort of legislation, they had 11 years in government to introduce this sort of legislation.”
The Coalition has refused to grant the Opposition leave to debate the bill, meaning it will not go any further before the Parliament rises for next month’s election.
Opposition leader Daniel Andrews said the bill was not a stunt.
“This is a genuine attempt to get some transparency, some clarity and some clarification if you like, about just how deep this crisis runs,” Mr Andrews said.
The attempt to introduce the legislation came after the parents of a toddler who died in a bathtub accident, slammed the Government over their 21 minute wait for an ambulance to arrive.
The Auditor-General found the state’s triple-0 service failed to dispatch the highest priority emergency calls to ambulances in an acceptable time.
In its annual report tabled in Parliament today, figures showed that Ambulance Victoria failed to meet response time targets for “code one” emergencies, like heart attacks and bad traffic accidents.
The report showed that 74 per cent of cases were responded to within 15 minutes in the last year.
The target was 85 per cent.
Ambulance Victoria said there was an increase in code one dispatches of about 3 per cent on the year before.
It said its ability to respond to emergencies was a timely manner was affected by a number of factors, including paramedics spending more time with patients.
Police and crime stats not included in Labor’s bill
Earlier today, Victoria’s Shadow Attorney-General Martin Pakula said if the Government did not support the bill, Labor would push it through Parliament if it was elected next month.
“Transparency is not just an end in itself, it’s important in making sure government departments and agencies operate effectively,” he said.
“Victorians are entitled to know the truth about how our hospitals, ambulances and fire services are performing.
“This is about making sure this information goes up on the departmental website as a matter of course.”
He said police and crime statistics would not be included in the bill.
“There’s been a crime stats agency created, and the release of crime stats is a matter for the Chief Commissioner, and so we think that is as it ought to be,” Mr Pakula said.
“This is what’s included in our data today, we’ve treated police stats differently because of the independent agency that’s been created.
“But we will before the end of October, I think would be my guess, be releasing a more widespread policy on data release.”