COUNTRY HEALTH SA

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (14:55): My question is to the Minister for Health. Why is the minister pretending still to consult the rural community and stakeholders—

The Hon. J.D. HILL: Sir, I rise on a point of order.

Mr PENGILLY: Listen to the question, John.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: There was a clear comment in that question. He said, 'Why is the minister pretending'.

The SPEAKER: Questions must not contain argument. An allegation that the minister is pretending, or anything like that, is out of order. I suggest that the member for Finniss rephrase the question.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The Attorney will come to order.

Mr PENGILLY: Why is the minister claiming to still consult the rural community and stakeholders about the development of its country health plan when already employees in Country Health SA are using it to reject services? The government has announced that it is consulting extensively to develop its Country Health Care Plan, having established its single country regional health service. When inquiries were made as to the establishment of a renal unit at the Victor Harbor hospital (the South Coast Hospital), where substantial local donations have been offered from the Port Elliot branch of the CWA (some $80,000), an executive officer of the department responded on 25 February 2008 as follows:

It now appears that the funding for new [renal] chairs is being allocated to more outlying country areas such as Port Augusta and Berri, which is consistent with the new directions for Country Health in supplying services to people in the country. The Hospital has prepared a Master Plan for a new health unit to be built on the south coast which will include a designated area for such services as Renal Dialysis. However, there is no funding forthcoming from the State Government and with the announcement of the Marjorie Jackson-Nelson Hospital and its associated costs it is unlikely that the local proposal will be considered in the near future.

The Hon. J.D. HILL (Kaurna—Minister for Health, Minister for the Southern Suburbs, Minister Assisting the Premier in the Arts) (14:57): That was not a direct quote from my department. If the member for Finniss suggests that that statement is a direct quote from my department, he is misleading the house. There were a range of facts, allegations, suggestions, opinions and half-truths in the statement made by the member for Finniss. Let me just go through some of the elements.

The first point relates to the country health plan. As I said earlier today, we will be releasing that in the near future, and that will be a document for consultation. We have consulted extensively with country regions over the last couple of years about the services they need. All those services, of course, have to be funded within a budget framework. The process of the approach that the government is taking is to have one integrated networked system of health providers in country South Australia where we can provide a greater range of primary health care and acute services and also a proper range of emergency services.

Clearly, not every town or centre can have everything that it wishes to have. There are not sufficient funds in any budget to do that. We have to allocate the resources to the areas of highest need, and that has to take into account the level of need of the particular communities and also the distance that people in those communities might have to travel in order to obtain those services in another community. That is the general framework.

In relation to renal services, we do want to extend those services in a series of major hospitals. I announced a year ago that it was our intention as a government to increase the range of acute services that were run through the four general hospitals that we have identified: in the South-East the Mount Gambier District Hospital; in the Riverland the Berri Hospital; in the north of the state the Whyalla Hospital; and on the West Coast the Port Lincoln Hospital. What the officer is alleged to have said is totally consistent with that framework.

The claim that has been made on a number of occasions now by members of the opposition (who desperately make up things to suit their own purposes) that, somehow or other, the construction of the Marjorie Jackson-Nelson Hospital is taking resources away from the country is absolutely fallacious, and the budget that will be announced later on today will demonstrate that absolutely categorically.