Grievance Debate

Health Review

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (16:01): Today I rise to speak about the widespread ramifications in South Australia, but particularly the ramifications that are affecting health in the regions of South Australia through the state government's Transforming Health and, in particular, the people of the Riverland and Mallee. After providing a submission on behalf of my electorate to the Transforming Health consultation in the early stages, I was extremely disappointed and concerned that there was very little to no mention of rural and regional South Australia in Transforming Health.

In some ways, the Transforming Health paper was really about cuts, closure and the instability of health services in South Australia, particularly in relation to people in regional South Australia having to travel for medical procedures. I was recently presented with a petition from 324 concerned Mallee residents opposing Labor's proposed cuts to emergency departments at Modbury and Noarlunga hospitals and the Repatriation Hospital. Those concerns were about health access in Adelaide for those country residents. Of course, the government backflipped on Noarlunga after the diligence of lobbying by its backbench, and I see that they seem to have quite a bit of sway that others do not. But while that backflip remains, there are still a number of concerns.

Sadly, this petition could not be officially presented to the parliament today. Those concerned residents immediately took action, downloaded some literature from online, and proceeded to lobby their community with the implications that Transforming Health was going to have. What it is showing me is that, due to a lack of specialist care in the Riverland and Mallee, a number of those patients who have to travel to Adelaide on a regular basis to seek medical assistance often require emergency care in Adelaide. A number of our returned servicemen are currently using or have used the Repatriation Hospital.

In addition, the people in my electorate also have relatives who live in Adelaide and are impacted by Transforming Health as well, and their concerns are being echoed throughout the Chaffey electorate. I think that it is really up to people within regional and metropolitan South Australia to rally and express their concerns, as the good people at Karoonda in the Mallee have. I commend their actions, albeit that they did not conform to the regulatory parliamentary petition paperwork that we have to have here. I commend those 324 signatures that have been presented to me, and that is why I am here grieving on it today.

Transforming Health fails to recognise that metropolitan and regional health systems must be integrated to deliver the best health outcomes for all South Australians. In fact, one-third of patients in metropolitan Adelaide hospitals' acute beds at any one time are from regional and rural South Australia. Again, these are some of the other concerns, other than the closure and the Transforming Health paper, that have been raised.

Obviously, there has been the centralisation of all of our services under this Labor government, and it is not just Health: this is a centralising government that likes to keep control. While we acknowledge the upgrade of the regional hospital in Berri, we wonder what the future of the outlying hospitals in the Mallee and Riverland will be, considering that the government are continually putting pressure on the hospital HACs, services and staff numbers and there are questions about exactly what services will remain and what services will go. I commend the advisory councils for keeping tabs on exactly what is going on in our regional hospitals.

Other areas needing improvement and of concern to residents in the Riverland Mallee health system are the amount of Aboriginal health services available and support of these services, and there is a lack of respite care and mental health services. I think mental health is something that this government needs to address, particularly in regional South Australia.