Failure After Failure Laid Bare in Health Annual Reports

Media Release | 17 October 2025

‍

Libby Mettam
Shadow Health Minister

‍

Western Australia’s failing health system has been laid bare for all to see after the release of annual reports from the WA Health Department and the state’s statutory health regions.

Shadow Health Minister Libby Mettam described the reports as a catalogue of the Cook Labor Government’s failures, making it disturbing reading for all West Australian patients and health workers.

“West Australians are still waiting too long for an ambulance to arrive, too long to be seen in our emergency departments, and too long for surgery,” she said.

“The continuing increase in the number of West Australians dying as a result of serious clinical incidents demonstrates the dangerous state of our health system.

Ms Mettam said the compounding failures were a recipe for disaster; putting the lives of Western Australians at risk and leaving doctors and nurses wringing their hands in despair.

“This failure is Labor’s failure,” she said.

“It is a failure to plan, a failure to manage and a failure to invest and Western Australian’s are paying the price for these failures.

“Our hospital system is simply not coping. The Cook Labor Government must heed what is written in these Annual Reports, not dismiss them, and invest in our hospitals.”

Some of the grim reading in the annual reports includes:

• On average, only 15 per cent of people who present at the emergency departments of our metropolitan tertiary hospitals with potentially life-threatening conditions were seen within the reccomended half-hour window;
  
• COVID emergency measures were reinstated at Fiona Stanley Hospital (FSH) in a bid to cope with record ambulance ramping;
  
• More than 50 per cent of triage two patients are not seen within the recommended 10 minutes;
  
• The number of priority-one calls to triple-0 attended within the 15 minutes has fallen further behind the 90 per cent target, to 83.3 per cent;
  
• In the regions, nearly 10 per cent of patients waited longer than the recommended 30 days for category one elective surgery with more than 15 per cent of category of patients waiting longer than 90 days;
  
• An increase in the number of patients dying from serious clinical incidents

“These reports back up what the Opposition has been saying for some time, and that is the Cook Labor Government have comprehensively failed the people of WA when it comes to timely and accessible and safe healthcare,” Ms Mettam said.

“In their report the North Metropolitan Health Service said ageing infrastructure was a significant challenge and yet we know Labor has not built one new hospital in nine years.”

MEDIA CONTACT: Graham Mason | 0419 194 792

‍