Mental Health

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:20): Given that the minister has just outlined to the house that there has been significant improvement in the Central Adelaide health system, can he perhaps provide an explanation as to why there were 16 patients over capacity in the Central Adelaide system as of 11.30 this morning?

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING (Playford—Minister for Health, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Health Industries) (14:20): I presume the Leader of the Opposition is referring to mental health patients. We did over the weekend and late last week have a significant surge in the number of mental health patients who were presenting to our health system. We have had mental health patients being delayed in emergency departments, because in a very short period of time, over a couple of days—I'll get the exact statistics for the Leader of the Opposition if he's interested—but in a very short period of time we did have a significant number of mental health patients presenting for treatment to the emergency departments across the system and, yes, there were some delays for those mental health patients being processed through the ED and into mental health beds.