Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Home Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker Small, it's great to see you in the chair, particularly as a Western Australian, representing the great seat of Forrest, because this speech is about the WA health system. This is the 15th time I've stood in this place to speak about the state of health care in Western Australia. And I'll keep speaking about it because the situation is getting worse. WA's health system is in a death spiral. Last month, WA Labor broke its own record again, with more than 7,000 hours of ambulance ramping. That's two months in a row. Nine years ago, then Labor opposition health minister and now WA premier, Roger Cook, called 1,000 hours of ramping a crisis. If 1,000 hours was a crisis, 7,000 hours is a catastrophe. Yet the Premier continues as if nothing is wrong—no urgency, no accountability, no plan. The Premier is disconnected from reality.

Behind every one of those hours is a person: an elderly patient in pain, a paramedic stuck outside a hospital unable to help, a nurse stretched to breaking point or a doctor doing their best in a system that is failing them. People in WA know the truth. They live it in waiting rooms and in ambulances in perpetual crisis. My community's local hospital, the Peel Health Campus, is a clear example. WA Labor has been promising upgrades for more than eight years, and still we wait. Just this Monday, the average triage wait time at Peel was 100 minutes, the second-worst in the state. That's not just a number; that's a mother with a sick child, a pensioner in distress or a family waiting for answers. The Peel region is growing rapidly, but our hospital hasn't kept pace. The result is longer waits, more pressure on staff and compromised care.

Despite all this, Roger Cook claims our health system is world class. I've said this many times, and let me be clear: our health professionals are world class. Our doctors, nurses and paramedics are doing extraordinary work under almost impossible conditions, but the system they're working in is broken. Seven thousand hours of ramping is not world class. A broken morgue door at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital is not world class. Flying to Canberra to beg for federal funding is not world class.

WA has a $2.4 billion surplus in the state coffers. There is no excuse for this level of failure. The people in my state aren't asking for much. They're asking for a health system that works, leadership that listens and promises that are kept. This is about more than just statistics; it's about trust. The WA Labor government has broken that trust. This is about whether this government is willing to face the truth and fix what's broken. WA Labor must be held accountable for the promises it's failed to keep and the lives it continues to put at risk. I will keep rising in this place until this government stops making excuses and starts delivering results. My community and all Western Australians deserve better from the Cook Labor government.