Premier Ben Carroll has launched his re-election campaign in earnest by promising to spend $750 million a year to fund 250 more emergency department beds at 12 hospitals across the state.
Dodging torrential rain in North Melbourne and dogged by dire opinion polls that show Labor heading for defeat on November 28, Carroll boarded his election campaign bus for the first time on Sunday morning and fired the starting pistol on a five-week campaign.
The slogan printed on its rear – “New Premier, New Direction” – is about as subtle as the bright red coach itself, as Carroll attempts to distance himself from his predecessors Daniel Andrews and Jacinta Allan, who he successfully challenged for the leadership just three months ago.
“Petrol’s paid for,” he joked while boarding the bus, referencing a bungle earlier this week when he inadvertently drove off from a service station without paying. The premier blamed the lapse on a busy and stressful day, and has since paid the $90 outstanding.
The first stop in trying to win over voters was Geelong’s University Hospital, where Carroll, flanked by Deputy Premier Gabrielle Williams and Health Minister Ingrid Stitt, announced Labor would spend $1.5 billion over four years to tackle chronic emergency department wait times.
The funding would pay for 1500 extra health workers, including 750 nurses, and allow 250 more beds to operate across 12 hospitals: the Alfred, Austin, Ballarat Base, Bendigo, Footscray, Latrobe Regional, Royal Children’s, Shepparton, Swan Hill, Werribee Mercy, Wonthaggi, and University Hospital Geelong.
Carroll said the funding would expand the hospitals’ emergency capacity by 25 per cent on average, to treat an extra 210,000 patients a year and cut wait times by 20 per cent.
As The Age reported on Sunday, hospital emergency departments are struggling to treat a record number of acutely unwell and injured Victorians presenting for treatment every day.
Victorian Agency for Health Information data shows more that half of emergency department patients are now waiting more than four hours to be treated, and the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine has warned the situation will deteriorate without urgent action.
Carroll said investing in public hospitals was “in Labor’s DNA” and took aim at Opposition Leader Jess Wilson, alleging she would “Americanise” the health system in partnership with One Nation if elected.
“It is so critically important that every Victorian knows there’s a real choice this election: a party and a movement that is fighting for working people, or a Liberal-One-Nation coalition that will hurt working people,” he said.
Speaking at a press conference in Melbourne’s outer east this morning, accompanied by federal Liberal Senator James Paterson, Wilson described Carroll’s announcement as just another hollow promise – citing languishing hospital projects in West Gippsland, Torquay, Eltham, Wonthaggi and Maroondah.
The Coalition’s health policy includes building new “transit lounge” waiting areas in up to 10 hospitals, incentives for healthcare workers to move to the regions, and spending $1.27 billion for public patients to have elective surgeries in private hospitals to clear waitlists.
Wilson said her party was looking at upgrading the Maroondah Hospital – something the community has campaigned for – but would not commit to it or other specific projects.
She also rejected Labor’s accusation that she was seeking to “Americanise” the state’s healthcare system by sending public patients into private hospitals.
“We have private capacity right here, right now. And my priority … is making sure that the nearly 70,000 Victorians waiting on the elective surgery waitlist get surgery sooner,” she said. “That is what a government should be doing. Not making big promises before an election, failing to deliver after.”
While Wilson has ruled out a partnership with One Nation, she was forced to concede on Sunday that the Liberal Party’s candidate for Sunbury, Simmone Cottom, “made a mistake” after being caught on a recording encouraging people to vote for One Nation.
“I’m encouraging people to change the government. In the lower house, vote Liberals and in the upper house, vote One Nation,” Cottom said in the recording, obtained by The Age.
Wilson said she had not discussed the incident directly with Cottom, but said campaign staff had.
“Simmone has said that she made a mistake and mistakes happen in campaigns. She’s apologised,” Wilson said.
Labor seized on the incident to bolster its attacks that the Liberals will govern in partnership with the populist right-wing party.
“It is clear: a Liberal and One Nation coalition will come together,” Carroll said.
The Age’s latest Resolve opinion poll has the Coalition with a primary vote of 28 per cent, Labor on 25 per cent and One Nation on 23 per cent. Those numbers point to a likely change of government, but it is unclear whether the Liberals and Nationals will be able to form a majority government in their own right.
Carroll’s election bus stopped en route back to Melbourne at the Werribee Centrals Cricket Club to meet about 50 Labor volunteers working on local candidate John Lister’s campaign.
Lister, a local school teacher, narrowly retained the seat of Werribee during last year’s byelection, despite a 16 per cent swing against it, following the resignation of former treasurer Tim Pallas.
Carroll said that despite being in office for 12 years, the byelection victory was proof Labor’s fight for a historic fourth term was far from over.
“You are going to help us make a very historic victory come November, just like we did in this room at the Werribee byelection,” he told supporters on Sunday afternoon.
“We’re going to defy the pundits. We’re going to make sure Labor wins – because we have to.”
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