There was a time when governments would be on political life support over health system failures such as this

What would have once stopped people in their tracks and sparked outrage and demands for answers is now met with a collective shrug. It’s all just part of life in modern Victoria.

Victorians in crisis have been left to die while desperately waiting for help. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

There’s a sad new reality in Victoria – death no longer matters.

We’ve lost our sense of what’s acceptable and grown dangerously used to a system where the promise of help is no longer a guarantee.

Twice this month, Victorians in crisis have been left to die while desperately waiting for help.

What would have once stopped people in their tracks and sparked outrage and demands for answers is now met with a collective shrug.

We have grown dangerously used to a system where the promise of help is no longer a guarantee. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

In the first case, an elderly Blackburn man was left to bleed out and die after falling and hitting his head.

He phoned triple-0 twice for help, but by time an ambulance arrived five hours later he was dead.

He was a nurse who worked in hospitals caring for and assisting fellow Victorians.

He lived alone after retirement – when he needed assistance, it wasn’t there.

Tragically, multiple paramedic crews were no more than five minutes away – stuck ramped at the nearby Box Hill Hospital.

In the second case, a woman in regional Victoria was left for dead after a fatal stand-off between paramedics and police.

A woman died after a fatal stand-off between paramedics and police.

Paramedics were called to the woman’s home, but refused to go without police because of an alert for violence on their system.

Police refused to go because they had visited the home multiple times in recent months and had seen no evidence of violence.

So the woman sat dying while emergency services argued over how best to respond.

Now her two young children are without a mum.

God only knows when this became acceptable, but we’re not shocked by this anymore.

We’ve built an immunity to avoidable tragedies and are no longer shocked that someone in crisis could call for help and die before it arrives.

Hospital ramping, sub-par ambulance response times, understaffed police stations, it’s all just part of life in modern Victoria.

Look no further than how our politicians respond to realise that it simply doesn’t matter.

There’s sympathy, but seldom solutions.

They hide behind reviews that go nowhere, or tell us “that’s not me you’ll have to speak to the health minister, I’m not here today to talk about that”.

They make public condolences, then move on because a death while waiting now sits somewhere between a sad story and an accepted fact of life here in Victoria.

Then it happens again, and we do it again, and again and again.

There was a time when governments would be on political life support over health system failures such as this.

We’ve built an immunity to avoidable tragedies and are no longer shocked that someone in crisis could call for help and die before it arrives.

Now it’s a rough press conference, maybe a bad day in parliament, then the issue quickly dies – here today, gone tomorrow.

And because the horror is no longer jarring, it’s routine, the government knows it can survive the headlines these tragedies do generate.

No longer are such issues politically dangerous – there are no mass protests, no polling slides, no frontbenchers falling on swords.

The failing health system dominated the 2022 election campaign.

Both Labor and the Coalition pledged billions of dollars in promises for new and improved hospitals and a beefed-up workforce.

At the time, ambulance response times were worse than they were before Labor came to power, surgery waiting list times had blown out and hospitals were overrun.

Covid was blamed.

Sure, it had an impact.

But throughout the pandemic, we spent years demanding more from our health system and applauding its workers.

We were locked inside, banned from seeing dying family and friends, and kids were not allowed to go to school or play in the park because we told ourselves we valued life.

And now?

Now we barely react when the system fails the very people it’s supposed to protect.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the same value that our politicians placed on life throughout the pandemic mattered now.

An ongoing inquiry into Ambulance Victoria is examining issues, including ramping and workloads of paramedics and the workplace culture within the service.

It has been told multiple lives have been lost and many more are being put at risk due to a toxic culture of harassment, poor management, burnout and a resourcing crisis.

It has also heard of escalating concerns and warnings that ramping has cost several lives and endangered more.

How seriously and quickly the government responds to any recommendations it makes will be telling.

Our health system is far from the worst in the world, but no government should be allowed to take comfort in comparisons.

Because every time a person dies waiting, and nothing changes, we all become a little more accepting of the unacceptable.

Originally published as There was a time when governments would be on political life support over health system failures such as this