Health Review

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:22): My question again is to the Minister for Health. Why did SA Health organise only three community meetings and events during the consultation on the Transforming Health proposals paper but is now organising 11 community events to promote the government's decision?

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING (Playford—Minister for Health, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Health Industries) (14:23): During the consultation phase, there was a combination of community events. I know that I went to a number of community events. In addition to that, the member for Fisher, the member for Reynell and the member for Kaurna asked me to speak to community forums which they hosted. There were of course the community forums held by SA Health, and there was of course the process whereby people put in submissions. I think we received about 2,500 submissions in the second part of the consultation process, but having said that, of course, as I have been quite clear, the consultation continues.

This is not simply a situation where decisions are now made and, therefore, we are going to cease the engagement, because the fact is that, now we have made these in-principle decisions, there is an enormous amount of detail that has to be gone through. I did take on board the fact that, I think, overwhelmingly, in the submissions that came in, the recurrent theme was, 'Look, we just don't know enough. We need more detail.'

The problem is that, until we have made the in-principle decisions to go ahead with certain reforms, it's very hard to work out the detail of those changes, so we need to get the horse before the cart to enable us to work through that detail. We will be engaging with people as we go through that process so, again, of course we'd be having further community forums because we need to consult with people and continue the engagement process as we roll out these reforms.