WOMEN'S AND CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (15:20): A few minutes ago I asked a question of the Minister for Health in this place regarding the death of Ben Witham, on 24 May 2011. Last year, less than three months after Ben died, my wife and I stayed at Mount Bundy Station, the home of Ben and his parents, completely unaware of what had occurred and completely unaware that they had lost their son in circumstances which later came to light. We discovered fairly quickly that there was something wrong and we did not know what it was until we went out with Mr Witham on a tour of the property. Mount Bundy is a property at Adelaide River. It is station country but it has accommodation on it, and we were staying in the backpacker accommodation.

I have sat on this for over a year but on Tuesday when Megan Dillon wrote an article in The Advertiser about the death of Ben Witham and then I saw Scott and Sue on television that night, I was horrified. I am absolutely horrified and I do not think the minister has answered the question appropriately. Ben Witham actually had acute lymphoblastic leukaemia but that was not the cause of his death. The cause of his death was the incompetent treatment that he received at the Women's and Children's Hospital and the fact that he was left for 17 hours after having been flown down from Darwin.

If he had been left a couple of hours one could understand it, but to have been left 17 hours, and not treated—and I note Greg Cavanagh, the Northern Territory Coroner, said that Ben's treatment was like that in 'a Third World country'. It is inexcusable. I further ask in this place, what action has been taken against the senior doctor, Tames Revesz, over this matter? Has it been dealt with? Have the people involved been pulled into gear, because he was left for this period of time and he was not diagnosed for 17 hours and died of a perforated stomach ulcer. How on earth can our health system hold its head up on this matter?

It was a horrendous time for the family which they will never recover from and our state health system has failed dismally on this. It is all very well for the minister to get up and say that they are looking into this and they are looking into that but that will not bring back Ben Witham to his parents Scott and Sue, and his sisters. It is inexcusable in these days—in the year 2011 when this occurred—it should never have happened. I intend to follow through on this and get more information, but I think we have a duty to both Mr and Mrs Witham and their daughters that we pick up on this matter and follow it through.

The minister has to come back and give a proper explanation as to why someone was left for 17 hours in our absolute principal children's hospital—the Women's and Children's Hospital—and not be attended to and not diagnosed properly. In my view, it is almost with criminal intent that someone has been left for that time. I am not a lawyer but I am a parent and I can tell you that if it happened to one of my children there would be fur flying, and I am sure that Scott and Sue feel the same way. I am going to send them the question, I am going to send them this speech, and they would already have the article. It is simply not good enough for the minister to trot out the bureaucratic answer which he already had prepared this afternoon, which obviously he would have prepared after the Coroner's report came out on Tuesday.

I feel ashamed to be a South Australian. I feel ashamed that a 17-year-old boy died of a perforated stomach because doctors in this state at our principal Women's and Children's Hospital failed to deal with him for 17 hours and he passed away in such tragic circumstances. The family will never get over it, and I can tell you that because I lost a 17-year-old cousin who drowned and his family has never got over it. I feel intensely sorry for Scott and Sue and the family. They are still up there, 3,000 kilometres away from Adelaide. The least they could have expected was for their son to be decently treated and diagnosed when he was flown to Adelaide and perhaps he would still be with us now, despite the fact that he had leukaemia. He did not die of the leukaemia. He died of the perforated stomach. That is the sad part about this.

It is absolutely unbelievably criminal and I think it is an outrageous disgrace and a total slur on the South Australian health system where, incidentally, we have so many good people that do so many good things—I will never dispute that, I have been involved in it—but in this particular case, it never should have happened.