Repatriation General Hospital

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:52): Will the minister keep the Repat open if we can provide 13,000 hard copy signatures?

The Hon. J.R. Rau interjecting:

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING (Playford—Minister for Health, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Health Industries) (14:52): The Deputy Premier just said, 'Well, maybe the member for Hartley has been busy on his mouse clicking away 13,000 times.' I acknowledge that there are very strong feelings about the Repat. It has an important place in the hearts of all South Australians, particularly our veterans' community, but let's be real. Most parts of the Repat Hospital were built in the 1940s. They are quickly approaching the stage where they are no longer fit for purpose. We will not be able to continue safely to use those facilities for hospital purposes. This is the reality. We are approaching that date.

The second thing is, the needs of our veterans' community are very quickly changing. After the Second World War, we had thousands of young men and women return to South Australia with serious physical injuries that needed to be treated. Thank God, Australia will not be involved again, or in the near future, in those sorts of conflicts where thousands of young men and women are conscripted to serve overseas. The modern conflicts are smaller conflicts, which still have serious injuries, but I am happy to say our Army does an excellent job in tending to those physical injuries.

The missing gap is those who live with psychological trauma for decades: people who have returned from the Vietnam War who, 40 to 50 years later, are still suffering from the psychological trauma of their experience in the conflict and veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq. I have heard terrible cases of young men in their 20s who have served in Afghanistan suffering terrible psychological trauma from their experiences in that conflict.

We as a parliament have a responsibility to those people, and that responsibility is not to put them into a facility that is run down and decrepit. I want to improve that facility. I want to rebuild a new Ward 17 so that those returned servicemen and women can continue to receive the excellent services they have but in a new building, not be treated in a building that is many decades old and is run down and, quite frankly, no longer fit for purpose.

The SPEAKER: Before the leader rises again, the member for Unley is called to order and warned for the first time, the member for Finniss is warned, and I call the members for Hammond and Adelaide to order. Leader.