Key points
- The Victorian Ombudsman received a record number of complaints for the second year in a row.
- Grievances included a prison mouse plague and COVID restrictions.
- Complaints about Victoria’s local councils also rose, up 3 per cent on the previous year.
A woman hit with a $1894 ambulance fee despite not using an ambulance is among the unprecedented number of complaints received by the Victorian Ombudsman this year.
Ambulance Victoria paramedics found the woman in agony in a hospital parking lot while her husband rushed into the emergency room for assistance.
They administered pain relief and helped her inside the hospital with the use of some equipment.
Ambulance Victoria apologised after a woman who was never inside an ambulance was charged almost $2000.Credit:Wayne Taylor
But she was later shocked to receive a $1894 invoice from Ambulance Victoria for treatment and transport, even though she had never been inside an ambulance.
Ambulance Victoria twice refused to waive the debt. However, following the intervention of Ombudsman investigators – who found the charge inconsistent with accepted practices – it apologised to the family and agreed to forego the debt in full.
The complaint, which was detailed in the Victorian Ombudsman’s 2022 annual report, was one of 18,889 complaints received in 2021-22. The annual report was one of hundreds tabled in the Victorian parliament late on Tuesday.
It was a record number of complaints for the second year in a row, up almost 5 per cent from last year.
Prisons and local councils were the agencies most complained about. Health services created angst within prisons, followed by delays in receiving responses to concerns and requests, and complaints about property, including lost property.
In one complaint, a prisoner was alarmed about a colony of mice in a kitchenette at Port Phillip Prison.
After inquiries by the Ombudsman, prison staff agreed the area was unacceptably dirty, the cleaners were dismissed and pest control was increased from fortnightly to weekly.
A prisoner complained about a colony of mice at Port Phillip Prison. Credit:
Complaints about Victoria’s 79 local councils also rose, up 3 per cent on the previous year.
Common complaints related to the reasons behind decisions and financial matters such as rates and compensation for damage caused by council works.
About 3000 of the complaints related to human rights issues.
“The woman unable to cross the Victorian border to care for her starving animals; the environment group worried about contaminated soil; the pensioner struggling with fines on a speeding ticket – our complainants each have a story to tell about fairness of official decisions, many of which also impact their human rights,” Victorian Ombudsman Deborah Glass said in the report.
“As the Ombudsman, and Victoria’s human rights investigator, we listen to these stories, and do our best to resolve or investigate their complaints.”
The Ombudsman received 944 complaints about COVID-19 public health directions in 2021-22 – compared with 274 the year before – which were brought on by lockdowns, border closures and new requirements for vaccines and masks.
Glass said that while all COVID-related complaints were assessed, not all were investigated.
“We recognise that a public health crisis involves a balancing of rights and our decisions not to investigate vaccine mandates certainly caused some dissatisfaction among those who complained to us,” she said in the report.
The Ombudsman did, however, investigate the Department of Health’s decision-making over the closure of the Victoria-NSW border in July 2021.
Thousands were locked out and people were left stranded after they found themselves unable to get an exemption to enter Victoria to farewell loved ones at funerals, attend medical appointments, return home to care for animals or on compassionate grounds.
The report on the investigation, which was tabled in December 2021, said the Department of Health appeared to have a “culture of caution” against providing compassionate exemptions for people to enter Victoria and focused resources on keeping people locked out rather than helping them get home safely.
Glass did not criticise the decision to close the state border and accepted that the government had explicitly warned Victorians to come home, but said discretion applied under the blunt system was unnecessarily narrow and left people, in effect, homeless.
In her annual report, Glass said the Treasurer’s commitment to make up any shortfall to her finances allowed her to do the job expected of her by Parliament and the public.
“While I am grateful that my funding is no longer a current issue, I am also aware – together with my fellow integrity agency heads – that more could be done to embed independent budget processes, so this does not become an issue again in future,” she said.
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