Ambulance unavailability explodes, $700 million health cuts on the way

Despite an explosion in the number of Tasmanians needing ambulances when none are available, the Liberals are blindly pushing ahead with $700 million worth of cuts to the health system.

Shocking new data obtained through Right to Information shows there has been a 30 per cent increase in the number of cases where no ambulance was immediately available at dispatch over the past year.

In the 2024-25 financial year, there were 13,025 cases where no ambulance was immediately available at dispatch. This figure rose by nearly 4,000 to 16,905 in 2025-26.

With $700 million worth of cuts to the health department laid out in black and white in the budget, I shudder to think how many more Tasmanians will call triple-0 only to find out there isn’t an ambulance ready to be sent to them.

The Liberal Government’s only solution to the pressure on paramedics has been to “ban” ramping.

The RTI data also shows this so called “ban” has done nothing to improve ambulance response times which have remained stubbornly high and consistently above targets over the past two years.

The transfer of care protocol itself isn’t the issue – it’s the fact that without additional resources to support emergency department staff, the “ban” just shifts the pressure from one exhausted frontline to another.

Tasmania’s health professionals are already being stretched to the limit.

Outcomes are only going to get worse as Premier Rockliff lets Eric Abetz cut $700 million from the system to pay for 13 years of Liberal waste.