Victorian Government to Spend $12 Billion on Health System in 2022-2023

A nurse is seen inside the Royal Exhibition Building Vaccination Centre in Carlton in Melbourne, Australia, on Aug. 25, 2021. (Darrian Traynor/Getty Images)

The Australian state of Victoria will invest $12 billion (US$8.5 billion) to improve its health system as part of the 2022-2023 state budget.

Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas made the announcement as part of the state government’s eighth budget titled Putting Patients First on May 3. He said it would provide extra help to the state’s healthcare employees, with hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent on nurses, paramedics, emergency call-takers and elective surgery.

“This pandemic repair plan means more staff, better hospitals and first-class care,” Pallas told parliament.

Under the new budget, the Victorian government will train and hire 7,000 healthcare staff, including 5,000 nurses.

More specifically, it will spend $80 million to recruit 400 new surgery-related nurses, upgrade the skills of 1,000 nurses and theatre technicians, and hire up to 2,000 expatriate and international health workers.

Another $2.3 billion will go toward upgrading and building new hospitals, including the previously announced Melton Hospital, with an estimated construction cost of $900 million.

The state government will also invest $698 million to expand the Better at Home nursing program, which delivers health care to patients in their homes, and $124 million to recruit 90 more paramedics.

Additionally, $218 million has been set aside to relieve the pressure on Victoria’s triple zero emergency call service after several people died while waiting for an ambulance.

With this funding, the Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority will be able to hire an extra 280 call-takers in addition to the 120 announced in March.

However, Shadow Minister of Health Georgie Crozier criticised the Victorian government for the late response, saying it should have fixed the problems of the state’s emergency call service earlier.

“Andrews Govt warned in 2016 of triple zero shortcomings…2 years of successive lockdowns to ‘prepare our health system,’” she said in a statement.

“Yet the Andrews Govt failed to act. As a result, tragically too many Victorians have lost their lives.”

Agreeing with Crozier, Opposition Leader Matthew Guy said what Victorians needed was real solutions, not government PR and spin.

Meanwhile, the Victorian government said the pandemic repair plan would include the previously announced $1.5 billion COVID catch-up plan and aim to provide 240,000 surgeries each year by 2024.

It also plans to spend $521.7 million in the next two years to support hospitals treating patients who contract the coronavirus and a further $110 million to maintain the state’s COVID-19 pathways program.

Treasurer of Victoria Tim Pallas during a press conference in Melbourne, Australia, on Sep. 21, 2021. (Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images)

Pallas emphasised that the state government had spent $44 billion to deal with the pandemic and would not stop the spending yet.

Meanwhile, the Victorian government anticipated that the state’s expenditure would drop by 9.7 percent in the 2022-2023 financial year as it reduced short-term pandemic support initiatives.

The treasurer forecasted the state would achieve a $652 million surplus by 2025-2026 and said that a future fund would be established to pay the rising debts.

It is projected that Victoria will incur a $7.9 billion deficit in the 2022-2023 financial year, and net debt will surge to $167.5 billion in the next four years.

In the meantime, Guy condemned the Victorian Labor government for its handling of the health system, saying the healthcare crisis had occurred before the pandemic broke out, and Labor’s rule had caused the damage.

“How can you trust the government that got us into this mess to be the ones to get us out of it?” he said.