His comments were made following a report in the Melbourne media on Sunday, which listed Daylesford as one of 16 ambulance "black spots" in the state.

Mr McGhie said, based on leaked Ambulance Victoria documents, Daylesford had been identified as a high-risk area, with just one paramedic available at any one time to respond to all emergencies in the area.

According to the leaked documents, Daylesford has problems with high absenteeism, a high case load and a too-small number of community volunteers on hand to help out.

McGhie said the branch has two paramedics on a rotating roster responding to call-outs, who have to deal with a big coverage area with its closest support branch 33km away in Ballan.

Mr McGhie said the AEA, in its budget submission to Ambulance Victoria in February, requested three extra paramedics be put immediately into Daylesford, bringing the total number of paramedics up to five.

"That would put two paramedics in an ambulance every day in Daylesford," he said.

"Unfortunately they didn't take on any of our ideas or suggestions.

"There's such enormous pressure put on paramedics and they work such long hours, they have a high level of fatigue breaks.

"They're working 16, 17, 18 hours straight sometimes."

He said a handful of community members who were trained in first aid assisted the paramedics, but it should not be up to volunteers to staff ambulances.

Mr McGhie said the ambulance response time was greater than the government benchmark of 15 minutes for all emergencies in Daylesford.

He said when a paramedic was sick or absent the closest branches to respond were Ballarat, Ballan and Wendouree - putting help about half-an-hour away.

Ambulance Victoria general manager regional services Tony Walker said Ambulance Victoria had done a large amount of work in rural areas in the past 18 months. "We have provided more crews, new helicopters, a new communication system and upgraded a significant number of

rural branches, including the Daylesford branch which reopened last week," he said.

"We review our cases and workload daily and are always looking at ways of improving our service. But everything we do is geared towards saving lives and we are always in negotiations with government to get additional funding."