Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (15:31): I am rising to make just a few brief comments on the Safe Patient Care (Nurse to Patient and Midwife to Patient Ratios) Amendment Bill 2026, and in doing so follow Ms Crozier our Shadow Minister for Health’s lead in not opposing the bill. I just want to make some brief comments around the bill and then particularly nurses in my Eastern Victoria Region and also the environment, the hospitals, in which they perform their amazing tasks in the service of the health and wellbeing of our good people. This bill reclassifies 26 hospitals, and those include 17 in regional and rural Victoria, some of them in my electorate. The government has allocated over $1 million to do this and promises over 250 additional full-time equivalent positions.
We support certainly the objective of this bill of improving patient safety and care and also supporting the hardworking nurses and midwives within our workforce. Indeed I really want to pay homage to and thank the nurses right across Victoria and also the learning institutions that have produced nurses. My own son is a nurse and went through Federation University in the Latrobe Valley, in Churchill, with some excellent nurse teachers in that space. He has, sadly for us, moved on to New South Wales – a New South Wales gain – and works in Westmead hospital now as a nurse unit manager. So it goes to show the level. I know he really enjoyed his time. He went through Melbourne hospitals and also the Latrobe Regional Hospital, having that breadth of experience in a different range, whether it was acute, emergency – I know he particularly liked the emergency department – or the aged.
Just wanting to reiterate the experiences of others, indeed Ms Crozier, who was at the very forefront on the hospital ward as a nurse, knows the important role that they play. Having experienced, in some form, being in hospital over many years, you really are at a very vulnerable stage of your life when you are in there, for whatever reason. It is those nurses who not only provide that human care, that physical care, but who bring skills in technology, understand the physical body and how that operates, coordinate with other services and the doctors and also give social and emotional support. People are vulnerable when they come into hospital, and they so magnificently start to heal the mind sometimes as well as the body, and that reassurance is all part of the healing process.
We know that a ratio written into the legislation does not care for the patient; it is qualified, supported and properly rested nurses that do that. Some of the information that I have heard and learned from speaking to nurses in recent times is that our hospitals are significantly under pressure, there is no doubt about that. Indeed over the weekend I spoke to someone who was not a nurse but had worked in a hospital and had gone onto part-time and then casual. She said there was work piling up in the administrative section of the hospital, and it was really that they were short staffed, but she was not called in because there were just literally no funds. People were working extra-long hours and trying to remove that backlog within the administrative section.
We know our nurses do that shift work. If you are a night shift nurse, you are a particularly valuable type of person because that is certainly a significant impost on lifestyle. Missed breaks and overtime and occupational violence – we have seen that. I am sure that there have been many studies done on that and the importance of preventing occupational violence.
Georgie Crozier: That is why we are doing PSOs.
Melina BATH: I am very pleased that Ms Crozier was only a week ago, I think, announcing PSOs in policing – we need that. Just because someone is sick or a family is stressed, there is no excuse for creating a violent situation for our valued staff across the board. Indeed the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office (VAGO) a few years ago put out a report on the whole of public health respondents in Victoria. It said that up to 40 per cent of people were experiencing burnout. In 2024 the People Matter survey said that burnout was a real issue in our hospital system. The West Gippsland Healthcare Group staff highlighted that in that survey: 40 per cent responded with burnout. That is an alarming state – 40 per cent. Thirty-four per cent responded as such in Latrobe Regional Hospital. These figures do cover all staff, so it is not just our nursing staff. The National Nursing Workforce Strategy warns that without reform the nation could face a shortfall of almost 80,000 nurses by 2035. That is significant. We all stand up here and thank our nurses and appreciate them, but on the ground things need to happen to support nurses to stay and remain in that workforce. I know Ms Crozier just read into Hansard a short moment ago the testimony of a nurse that was just so frustrated and felt that her values and health were so compromised that she could not be in that system any further.
Georgie Crozier interjected.
Melina BATH: That is a real shock, it is a real shame. She is not the only one, you are right, Ms Crozier.
I just want to also point to a couple of the hospitals that are being changed under this legislation. The West Gippsland Hospital was opened in 1939, standing on that magnificent hill. But if you talk about nurses’ stress and when you look at some of the stress that they have to cope with, the corridors are narrow, the lifts are inadequate, there are leaking roofs, there is water damage, there is makeshift storage and services are dispersed across several buildings. That leads to, in itself, fatigue and an endurance level needed to have to cope with an antiquated and not fit-for-purpose hospital setting. Then look at patient beds and equipment and the like. My mum was recently in that hospital and had fantastic service. She is a mature lady, and she was treated for carpal tunnel syndrome, but I think she was actually treated in the paediatric ward because they could not find a bed for her because there was no space. Again, the nurses go to the nth degree for care and kindness, but you have to ask: when is enough enough? The government came around and promised in 2022 that it would produce a new hospital in West Gippsland, and yet we are still waiting. There is not a shovel in the ground on a donated piece of land, and I know the successive members for Narracan, both Mr Blackwood and Mr Farnham, have been huge advocates and strong citizens in advocating for this. I also know that we are going to build it if elected at the end of this year. $850 million: that is a commitment that we are not breaking like the government is.
And indeed, you expand a bit further. We know there is an area that has a growing population, a population in need, and it has a hospital that I also know quite well, the Wonthaggi Hospital. We have committed $350 million for stage 2 and stage 3. Again, when I had a rare moment in there overnight a little while ago, the nurses were coming up to me when they found out that I was a member of Parliament – I was not dying; I had a condition, but I was not dying – and they wanted to tell me what needs to happen in our health system. They were very professional. I kept on asking them, ‘Well, what’s going on here and there?’ and they had plenty of wisdom to share with me. Latrobe Regional Hospital, under this legislation, will be upgraded from level 2 to level 3. We know that there has been burnout and concern, and we do know that there is ramping. We know that that is a hospital doing amazing work, but it is under pressure and it is under stress.
I want to just move to a couple of other parts in my electorate. East Gippsland’s hospital the Bairnsdale Regional Health Service will become, under this legislation, a level 2 hospital. It is the catch-all for people far, far away, from Mallacoota to Orbost and all the north and south of Bairnsdale. And I know my colleague Mr Tim Bull and indeed our candidate Gemma Rendell have got a petition out. Why is that important? Because they know that they need a stage 1, they need an upgrade, they need a new emergency department, and they need to stop that ramping. When I spoke with ambulance officers some time ago during the EBA negotiations, when they came out and spoke to us, they too were very worried about that ramping there. We need to be able to have a hospital fit for purpose now and into the future – planning into the future. The other day I was at the Heyfield Hospital, again with Gemma Rendell, and we had a good look around there. This is a beautiful hospital. People are so passionate about this hospital in the Heyfield area because it is a real blended hospital. It has got an aged care facility there and it is right beside the medical clinic. It has opportunity to grow, and it is just a really wonderful model. I know the CEO, Michele Gardner, is very passionate. She is going to squeeze every cent that she can get out of the government, but she also wants to know that it can grow and be serving that community.
Finally, in terms of bush nurses in our region, I have mentioned this many, many times, but when you go into the remote and rural regions in all of Victoria, but particularly in East Gippsland, these people are absolutely gold. They are trusted people in our communities. Talk about extending – they work beyond their hours, I am sure beyond any EBA, if they are on one. They respond in times of crisis. They are getting squeezed and squeezed and squeezed by a government that is not live to the process. There is cost impost on administration. There is cost impost on all of the services – that is, electricity and the works. There is more pressure on their budgets, and they are having to cut – which actually really, really affects them deeply, because they are part of their community – and reduce those services because they are literally not getting any extra funding. Talk about burnout – they hold the fort 24/7, and we are very, very respectful of and highly grateful for their services.
Finally, in relation to this bill, as we have seen with previous amendments in 2025, concerns remain about adequate funding, as I have just outlined, and the health services’ ability to comply with these new requirements given the current workforce shortages and overstretched hospital budgets that I have just been speaking to. I will leave my contributions there. I thank Ms Crozier for all the work that she has done over all my time here, which is 11 years – a dedicated, passionate, considered and on-the-ground shadow minister. I really hope that she can take this forward and become the minister very soon.