Ambulance Victoria spends $760,000 on 'diversity and inclusion' roles after 33 died waiting for help

Victoria's Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commissioner Ro Allen

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• By Avi Yemini

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Victoria's Labor government has come under fire after it was revealed the state's ambulance service spent $760,000 on hiring 'diversity and inclusion' officers after at least 33 Victorians died waiting for paramedics.

An independent report released over the weekend linked triple-zero and ambulance delays to 33 deaths in the past few months, while a former chair of the emergency service claims he was 'pressured to resign' after asking for a new funding model in 2015.

Ambulance Victoria advertised for six senior diversity positions in their ranks, with all but one role offering salaries above $100,000.

The Daily Mail Australia reports:

The Director, Diversity & Inclusion job comes with a pay packet of more than $169,000, the new Senior Lead, Diversity & Inclusion officer will pull in $147,000 while the Program Lead, Equality & Workplace Reform Division will take home $122,000. 

IPA director Bella d'Abrera told The Australian the Andrews government and Ambulance Victoria had 'fully embraced the woke agenda to the detriment of Victorians' lives'. 

'It's unforgivable that at least 10 extra call takers could have been hired with the amount of money that the government spent on obscure theories about gender, power and race,' she said. 

The new diversity roles were aimed to tackle findings from a 17-month investigation by Victoria's Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commissioner Ro Allen examining the 'toxic culture' of the ambulance service.

The report, released in March, found that senior ambulance staff were expected to be 'white, male … confident, stoic and … the family breadwinner' and concluded that it 'hampered other people advancing in the organisation'.

The latest news will come as cold comfort to those who lost loved ones due to delays in critical care from the service.

The Inspector General's review of triple-zero and ambulance delays found insufficient funding was the 'main cause' for the unnecessary deaths of 33 Victorians while Andrews has deflected the claims and blamed the Covid Pandemic.

Emergency calls were put on hold during 40 life-threatening events between July 2021 and the end of May.

Former service chair Roger Leeming told 3AW radio host Neil Mitchell that he raised concerns in 2015, before receiving a letter from government 'suggesting he’d be moved on from his position'.