Grievance Debate

HEALTH DEPARTMENT

Mr HAMILTON-SMITH (Waite) (15:26): What we have heard of today in the house is a health department in total disarray led by a minister who is in total disarray. What we have heard today goes back, in fact, to the last election when clearly, as exposed today, the government was in the business of using the Public Service during the caretaker period for the express purpose of trying to cause political damage to the opposition's superior argument that the Royal Adelaide Hospital should have been rebuilt in situ at the east end. This is a blatant breach of convention and puts public servants in an extremely awkward situation.

The string of emails and minutes written from public servants to the minister demonstrate quite clearly that public servants were put in the position of having to engage in political argument to help the Labor government achieve its political goals. This is a terrible situation for any government to put hardworking public servants in, but I have to say that it also raises questions about the public servants themselves who should have questioned the appropriateness of the course of action the Minister for Health was asking them to take. It also raises questions about the minister for the Public Service at the time who, from recollection, may have been the Premier. Should public servants be used in this way during a caretaker period? I think it is a damning sequence of revelations and one of which the government should be ashamed.

It does not end there. We had an embarrassing ministerial statement from the minister before question time today, full of extraordinary revelations. We find that the figure for PKF consultants now is in the order of $1.7 million. The Auditor-General told the Economic and Finance Committee in recent days that it was about $500,000. We have had the extraordinary admission today that it has taken $1.7 million of the taxpayers' money to sort out the mess the Minister for Health created, and it is still not sorted out.

This is a minister—and I want his colleagues to hear this—who for seven years has just delegated not only the work but also the responsibility to his department. He turned the strategy of his predecessor the Hon. Lea Stevens on its head, her focus on primary health care, and bucketed everything into hospitals. He has taken a proposal to cabinet to purchase an Oracle corporate financial management system without a business case, bum drummed cabinet about the cost of it, failed to implement adequate management control over it, and now it is an absolute mess.

This is a minister who does not pay his suppliers and who does not pay his staff, ambulance officers and nurses, a minister who has delivered financial ruin to his portfolio. He has put a resources unit in at a cost of $10 million over four years to try to sort out the mess, and we have had The Australian reveal that it has only met twice. It has failed to make any concise and constructive recommendations about change and financial prudence within the department, and it has been in place nearly six months. The minister also told the house today that phase 2 of Oracle is in doubt and that he plans to try to cut 220 more full-time positions from the department.

I could just go over the series of problems in this department, but I will leave that until the Auditor-General's questioning this afternoon, until another time. However, I will say this: the health department is in chaos and it is costing the taxpayers of this state millions of dollars to sort out the mess. This minister has delivered ruin while standing up and trying to pretend that everything is fine. We now go into an uncertain future in health, unsure about how we will pay the bills.

In the context of this, the health system itself is in very poor shape. It is time for this parliament to ask the health minister a simple question. Clearly he does not intend to continue on in the parliament beyond 2014, he intends to retire; say so, let us get a new minister and let us get someone in there who can try to sort out the mess this minister has created.