Health Budget

The SPEAKER: A final supplementary. Actually, just make it a new question.

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:19): Just for clarity, sir, the Treasurer has just given the house a commitment that there will be no cuts to Health SA's front-line—

The SPEAKER: No. We did not ask for clarity: we were expecting a question.

Mr MARSHALL: Yes, we asked the Treasurer to clarify for the house that he is giving a commitment in the house today—

The SPEAKER: Is he giving a commitment?

Mr MARSHALL: —that there will be no cuts to front-line services for Health SA in the forward estimates.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens—Treasurer, Minister for Finance, Minister for State Development, Minister for Mineral Resources and Energy, Minister for Small Business) (14:19): Mr Speaker, we will honour all agreements we have within the enterprise agreements.

Mr Pisoni interjecting:

Mr Marshall: You can't answer this. You can't give a straight answer because you've got it wrong.

The SPEAKER: The member for Unley is warned a first time and the leader is warned a second time.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: What were you singing with the Greens, Never Tear Us Apart? Was it Never Tear Us Apart? Close? We will always honour our arrangements where we have enterprise agreements. We have no plans to cut front-line staff. We want to make sure that we give people the very best health care that they deserve. And what we are going to be doing is abiding by all of our enterprise agreements and making sure of those ratios of nurses and ratios of doctors, and we have more nurses and more doctors per capita than any other jurisdiction in the country and we are proud of that.