00:00 What happens to a promise after it wins an election?
00:07 Does anyone remember it?
00:09 Does anyone care?
00:11 Remember this?
00:12 Labor promised at the last election to fix the ramping crisis.
00:16 That means stopping ambulances waiting outside hospitals with patients inside.
00:22 The problem is, since Labor took office, ramping has got much worse.
00:27 You remember this?
00:28 Yes.
00:29 What do you think of how it's going?
00:31 It's not going to be fixed in two years.
00:34 It's going to take at least three or four years, and they're working on it.
00:38 That's what politicians do, they'll tell you the right thing at the right time.
00:42 They can't do it, neither could the Liberals.
00:45 I think it's going to be forever, ever ramping.
00:47 I think it's something to stay.
00:49 It's really disappointing, it shows that you can't really have any faith in the parties when they say that they're going to do something.
00:54 They're politicians, they promise the world and deliver nothing.
00:57 I'm Peter Malinowskis.
00:58 At the last state election, voters were told rising ambulance ramping threatened their lives.
01:04 At the coming election, vote Labor, like your life depends on it.
01:07 People were worried when ramping was happening here, then they were really, really worried, but this is complete bedlam.
01:14 But since Labor won office in March 2022, ambulance ramping has increased from around 2,700 hours per month to more than 4,000 hours in March this year,
01:26 and around 3,500 hours in April.
01:30 Ambulances have now spent more time ramped in just two years of Labor government than they did in four years of the Liberals.
01:38 That's despite Labor spending tens of millions of dollars on new ambulance stations, extra crews, more hospital beds and increased staffing.
01:47 We're investing, we're hiring more, we're building more, we're putting more in place.
01:51 We are continuing to make every possible investment that we can.
01:55 We are using a significant amount of state government resources, putting into the system, building those additional beds.
02:04 Ramping is a complex problem caused by failures across both the state and federally administered parts of the health system.
02:13 Some initiatives are helping, such as improvements at specific hospitals like the Lyle McEwen.
02:19 They've been able to improve a number of their processes in the hospital that have helped to turn around their ramping situation,
02:25 such that it's reduced by 45% just in the past six months.
02:30 Paramedics, who ran a prolonged campaign against the Liberal government, are willing to give Labor more time.
02:37 The difference now is that we have a government that acknowledges the situation, where we've come from, where we were at the time,
02:47 and is going to extraordinary lengths in attempts to resolve the situation.
02:57 The opposition is not.
03:00 Ramping is deteriorating at such a dramatic rate that by the next election we'll have more than 6,000 hours wasted on the ramp every month.
03:09 We will have multiple patients dying every week on the ramp.
03:13 I think it'll be a primary focus of the 2026 election, and it'll be a battering ram against Labor's credibility.
03:20 It might not be a very effective one.
03:23 Analysts expect Labor to retain office whether it fixes the ramping crisis or not.
03:29 Labor will, I think, lose some skin from that, but on the other hand he's travelling very well in other regards,
03:35 and certainly will go into the next election as a very strong favorite.
03:39 Which means that voters might mark Labor down for over-promising, but not write them off.
03:46 them off.
03:46 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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