RENMARK HOSPITAL

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:43): Will the Minister for Health explain why the Renmark hospital—

The Hon. P.F. Conlon interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The Minister for Transport will come to order.

Ms CHAPMAN: Will the minister explain why the Renmark hospital is being downgraded under his Country Health Care Plan only a month after work was completed on a $3.1 million upgrade to the hospital?

The Hon. J.D. HILL (Kaurna—Minister for Health, Minister for the Southern Suburbs, Minister Assisting the Premier in the Arts) (14:44): I am very pleased that the deputy leader has asked this question, because it gives me an opportunity to answer it in great detail. Of course, her question (as is often the case with the Deputy Leader of the Opposition's questions) is based on a false premise.

The government is not downgrading the Renmark hospital whatsoever. In the advice that I have provided in a ministerial statement today, and based on a statement I made to the community just the other day, I said we expect there to be no change in the services that are provided by that hospital over the period of the next 10 years or so. It depends very much on the decisions made by independent doctors. Over the last year or so the doctors of Renmark Hospital decided that, in future, birthing, which used to take place Renmark Hospital, will now take place at Berri Hospital. That is a decision they came to based on their judgment about what was needed. Renmark Hospital will continue to provide the current range of services while a workforce is there able to provide them. That is the point that I have been making consistently over the last four or five weeks, which has been misinterpreted in a malicious way by the opposition and some of its colleagues, for crass political purposes.