HEALTH BUDGET

Mr HAMILTON-SMITH (Waite) (15:26): I rise to talk on health budget matters and to draw to the house's attention the sad news of recent days: that the blowout in the health budget appears now to have increased from the $99 million figure that the Minister for Health revealed to parliament on 16 February to a figure more attuned to $114.3 million. The reason for that is that there has been a mishandling of the Burnside mental health facility project, with the result that a remediation expense estimated to be around $1 million has become an expense of around $25 million.

I note that the minister claims that, as a result of offsets or changes in design and scope to the project, he may be able to ameliorate that figure down to something in the order of $15.3 million. That overrun will clearly be an overrun that comes from the health capital works budget that goes on to the figure which is the overspent amount within health.

For the health budget to be overspent by $114.3 million, or thereabouts, in this financial year (2011-12) at this point in the cycle is concerning in itself. I just want to remind the house of some of the issues before the Minister for Health. First of all, he has not tabled an annual report. Second, he did not provide his financials to the Auditor-General or to the parliament in time for a proper audit to occur, resulting in the Auditor-General making damning comments in regard to the minister's portfolio management in his report. As he indicated, he would have to bring in a special report, which we await and which may even be arriving in the parliament this week or the next week of sitting.

To a large degree, this has been caused by the minister's decision to implement a new IT financial management system in his portfolio under the auspices of Oracle. The Auditor-General pointed out that, when he took that submission to cabinet, he did not present a business case and he misadvised cabinet about what the cost of that project would be by many millions of dollars. These are facts reported by the Auditor-General. It is now a mess. Bills have been double-paid, accounts cannot be reconciled, and a $10 million emergency group has been put together to try to sort out the mess.

As well as that, we have nurses protesting outside the Mount Gambier Hospital, the Renmark Paringa hospital and here in Adelaide, about safety concerns linked to under-staffing in our hospitals. We have had emergency department elective surgery figures that leave much to be desired and we have come in last of all the states in regard to the four-hour rule in our emergency departments. There are problems right across the country health system and, of course, issues at the Royal Adelaide Hospital in the rail yards.

It is a mess, to be frank. I am intrigued that more has not been made of it and I will be ensuring that more is made of it because this is 30 per cent of government outlays. It is $5 billion, 30,000 people, and it is important money that needs to be spent well.

I want to turn my attention to the last of the points I observed in regard to the Royal Adelaide rail yards hospital because I want to draw to the attention of the house concerns raised before Christmas about contaminated groundwater and the need for asphalt membranes and vents so as to remove noxious gases that could be a risk to health workers. I want to draw to members' attention that, on 2 February, concerns were raised about the removal of fill from the site that was supposed to be deemed clean fill but was later found to be contaminated. It was reported in The Advertiser.

Of course, last Thursday, there was the stunning revelation that 11,000 tonnes, which was the expected highly-contaminated waste component, had become 30,000 tonnes. Somehow or other, the minister had missed the fact that the amount of highly-contaminated waste was three times the size he initially estimated. All this was supposed to be removed at $250 a tonne and I really want to know whether each tonne that has been removed at that cost has been properly treated. I want to know where that treated, highly-contaminated waste is located. I want an assurance that it has been treated in accordance with EPA protocols and that we know where it is.

Clearly, there is something going terribly wrong down at the Royal Adelaide site in regard to the removal and remediation of highly-contaminated waste. We have had the so-called independent auditor removed and replaced with someone else. There are concerns about the EPA's management. All these amount to an overspend in health and concerns for the integrity of the health budget that the house should note with concern.