COUNTRY HEALTH CARE PLAN

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop) (15:28): Like my colleague the member for Goyder did a few minutes ago, I want to talk about the country health plan. I also bring to the attention of the house the impact I expect this will have on some of the communities in my electorate, which is a very extensive electorate. Geographically, it is the fourth largest electorate in the state. It takes me longer to drive across my electorate than it would take many city-based members to walk across their electorate (and that is not driving slowly, either).

Before I talk about the impacts of this plan, I want to bring to the attention of the house some of the misinformation that underpins—or I presume underpins—the country health plan. I also want to tell the house of my dismay on discovering that the minister dropped that plan out for the public on the afternoon the budget was announced. As soon as I discovered that, I knew we were in for a bad time in the country because I knew the minister was looking for a busy news time so that he could slide it in at a time when it would receive as little publicity as possible. That was the first thing that came to mind—and I was not disappointed when I brought up the plan on my computer and started reading about the hospitals in my electorate. It immediately came to my attention that my home town of Millicent has a very, very good hospital. Fortunately, I do not expect that Millicent Hospital will suffer through this process as greatly as some other hospitals.

Let me tell members about some of the misinformation in the document released by the minister. He claims that Millicent Hospital has 35 beds and that it has an occupancy rate of 50 per cent. My understanding is that, when the current Labor government came to power, the Royal Adelaide Hospital had some 850 beds; today, it has 650 beds. If we were talking about the occupancy rate at the Royal Adelaide, would we use 850 or 650 as the number? I suggest that we would say that it is only a 650-bed hospital and that it has a high occupancy rate.

Although Millicent Hospital has 35 beds, it is funded and staffed to operate only 28 beds. I am told (and, I believe, reliably so) that, once they have 28 patients, when the 29^th patient arrives on the doorstep they are transferred to, say, the Mount Gambier hospital so that they do not go over 28 patients. I think that it is totally incorrect and misleading for the minister and the department to publish a document purporting that Millicent Hospital has 35 beds. I assume (and I think I am correct) that the same thing has been done right across the state.

I tell city-based members, who would be unaware of this, that country hospitals quite often have aged care patients in their beds and that these are not counted in the occupancy rate. When it states that the average occupancy of Millicent Hospital is 17 beds (which is only half of 35 and therefore 50 per cent occupancy) it does not take account of the fact that often a number of aged care patients are in the hospital. There is no extra funding or extra staffing, but the patients are there.

It is totally erroneous to suggest that Millicent Hospital is an underutilised service, because the figures have been twisted to try to give that impression. It is erroneous and a complete falsehood. If that is the sort of working that underpins this Country Health Care Plan, no wonder country people are up in arms.

My greatest concern is for the smaller communities where hospitals will be downgraded to so-called GP Plus clinics. From my experience as a country member in this parliament for 10 years, what will happen is that, once the downgrade occurs, those communities (and there is a large number of them across the state) will have great difficulty in retaining their local GPs, and they will have huge difficulty in attracting replacement GPs when it becomes necessary from time to time.

That is the fundamental problem of the Country Health Care Plan. There are a whole heap of other problems, but that is the most frightening for country people. This nonsense that people in, say, Bordertown will go to Mount Gambier for more significant health service, rather than come to Adelaide, is just that—nonsense. When people are in hospital, particularly for an extended period, they need the support of family and friends. People in Bordertown always have family and friends in Adelaide, but they rarely have them in Mount Gambier.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Mr WILLIAMS: The whole plan is based on—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member has taken too many liberties.

Time expired.