A Shorten Labor Government will invest $129 million to upgrade and expand emergency departments and slash ED waiting times in Victoria.

Twenty-eight per cent of people who present to EDs in Victoria are not seen within clinically recommended times.

For urgent patients, that number rises to 32 per cent.

That will only get worse if Scott Morrison is re-elected on 18 May because he plans to cut a further $635 million from our public hospitals over the next six years.

This is equivalent to:

• 157 beds a year for six years.
• 435 doctors a year for six years.
• 892 nurses a year for six years.
• 953,450 ED visits.
• 1.5 million outpatient visits.
• 176,000 cataract extractions.
• 24,400 knee replacements.

Under Labor, Victorian hospitals will be an estimated $830 million better off.

That’s the combined total of Victoria’s share of our Better Hospitals Fund – which reverses the Liberal cuts of the next six years – our new investment in driving down ED waiting times, and our separate investment in cancer patient waiting times.

Labor has already committed nearly $150 million for hospital capital projects in Victoria including:
 

• Box Hill Hospital $25 million.
• Frankston Hospital Health Futures Precinct $21 million.
• Ballarat Innovation and Research Collaboration for Health $10 million.
• Dandenong Hospital outpatient upgrades $14.5 million.
• Prahran Community Health Hub $4 million.
• Casey Hospital - repurpose palliative beds to mental health beds $22.4 million.

In Victoria, a Shorten Labor Government will also link eight hospitals to our National Telestroke Network, provide two new Camp Quality Liaison Officers, 11 specialist cancer nurses, five new Red Cross Milk Banks and four additional Medicare MRI licences.

Victoria will also benefit from other elements of Labor’s $2.3 billion Medicare Cancer Plan, as well as our $2.4 billion Pensioner Dental Plan.