Liberal Party’s ‘Ditch Danmobile’ stunt may be in breach of the Emergency Services Act

The Liberal Party could find itself in hot water over a vintage ambulance it rolled out on day one of the state election campaign.

The vintage ambulance has been dubbed the ‘ditch Danmobile’.

A Liberal Party election stunt may have spectacularly backfired on day one of the campaign, with concerns it may have breached emergency services laws.

The Liberals unveiled a vintage ambulance dressed up as a “Ditch Danmobile” on Wednesday, saying the vehicle would spend the campaign searching for the government’s 4,000 promised ICU beds.

A social media page for the vehicle was launched at the same time.

But concerns have been raised that the stunt may be in breach of the Emergency Services Act which outlaws use of the words ‘ambulance service’ “or any name, title or description to imply an association with an ambulance service, unless such an association exists, without the written authority of the Secretary.”

Opposition leader Matthew Guy refused to say whether the party had received legal advice before launching the stunt.

“I’m not going to take any lectures from these people when it comes to political advertising,” he said.

The ‘Ditch Danmobile’ stunt could backfire.

Matthew Guy says he won’t be lectured by Labor.

“These people do the same kind of tricks and then attack everybody else, I’m just not interested.

“I will not be lectured by the union movement, who are the architects of political advertising in this manner.”

Mr Guy said Labor had employed a similar stunt during the 2014 campaign.

“I’m not going to be lectured by the Labor Party or the union movement on this, full stop,” Mr Guys said.

In April 2020, as the Covid pandemic was taking hold in Victoria, Daniel Andrews promised $1.3 billion to “quickly establish an extra 4,000 ICU bed.

The Premier later conceded it would not be possible to have “4000 beds down at a warehouse somewhere” with nurses ready to go.

The state’s health crisis has become a central issue to the election campaign, with more than $10bn in new funding pledged by the major parties.

Mr Andrews defended his government’s record on health, dubbing the Ditch Danmobile campaign a “stunt”.

“I’m not here to talk about the stunts of others,” he said.

“I’m not here to talk about what others are up to. On ambulances though, let me just make it really clear, when we came to office, the government that we replaced was at war with our ambos.”

“We then worked very hard in partnership with our paramedics to deliver the very best ambulance response times ever, ever recorded, that was literally just weeks before Covid came. Our paramedics have done such an amazing job … and we will get those response times back to where they were.

“Stunts. I’ll leave that to others. The ambulances I’m focused on are the hundreds and hundreds of additional brand new ambulances that we have purchased. 23 new ambulance stations that we’ve opened and the 2200 extra paramedics that we have been able to recruit over our time in office.”

Last week the Herald Sun revealed ambulance response times were worse now than when the Andrews Government was first elected in 2014.