Bills

Health and Community Services Complaints (Budget Report) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 28 October 2015.)

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (11:03): Mr Speaker, I can tell the house that I am the lead speaker on this bill. It is a fairly straightforward piece of legislation that removes one clause from the current act. The situation at present is that, under section 15 of the Health and Community Services Complaints Act 2004, the commissioner is required to furnish a report at the end of the financial year to the Economic and Finance Committee. The section provides:

The Commissioner's proposed budget for a particular financial year is to be submitted for examination by the Economic and Finance Committee of the Parliament by the end of the preceding calendar year.

That is a unique requirement of statutory officers, as far as I am aware, and this bill will just remove that clause from the act. The Economic and Finance Committee has recommended that the Social Development Committee review the HSCS budget, as that is more appropriate, but I understand the advice from the Social Development Committee is that they have indicated that reviewing the Health and Community Services Complaints Commissioner's budget is not within the committee's functions. The fact that this requirement is unique to the commissioner under this legislation is something that this bill is going to correct.

The Liberal Party has undertaken consultation with a range of stakeholders including the AMA, the Private Hospitals Association, the nurses' federation and, of course, the commission, as well as the Ombudsman, the South Australian Salaried Medical Officers Association and the Health Consumers Alliance. The commissioner has made some remarks on the bill. He said:

In the budget cycle, I am not able to provide meaningful information for the future year as contemplated by the act. Indeed, at times the office budget is not confirmed until October of the current year.

The commissioner went on to say:

I report on the budget and actual expenditure in my annual report.

We should all remember that a report is tabled before this place, and that will continue to be the case. It is vital that we are aware of the functions of the commission. It was set up in 2004 to provide advice to consumers on their concerns about a whole range of health-related matters. The big concern that the opposition has, which a number of my constituents have voiced, is their ability to access the services of the commission.

I should tell the house that there has been a very concerning decline in resourcing of the commission. In 2005-06, the commission had funding of $1.27 million with 11.6 FTEs. By 2014, that had decreased in real terms—while the dollar numbers were right, in real terms there was a recurrent base of $1.286 million with 9.7 FTEs.

There is a need to make sure that if we are going to set up a body like this it is well resourced both financially and with people working in the office. That was the ambit, the aim, but unfortunately because of financial constraints and staffing constraints, there are some issues with the ability of the commission to continue to act in the way it was initially set up.

The Liberal Party will be supporting this legislation. We look forward to reading the commissioner's reports in the future and, certainly, I hope the commission is able to do the job it was set up for. I am currently dealing with a constituent who has some concerns about the way the commission is being, in their opinion, somewhat tardy in handling their complaint. I suspect that is due to the fact that funding and staffing have reduced. Supporting this commission is vital and this piece of legislation will make the job a bit easier for the commissioner.

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (11:07): Good morning, Mr Speaker, and it is great to be back. I rise to speak on the Health and Community Services Complaints (Budget Reform) Amendment Bill 2015. I confirm that I will not be opposing the bill, but there are a number of concerns that I wish to place on the record. Nothing I have to say at this point is a reflection on Ms Leena Sudano who for, I think, nearly a decade was the commissioner under this act or more recently Mr Steve Tully, who has provided a report to the parliament for the 2014-15 year to which I propose to refer.

Members will be aware that shortly after the 2002 election, one of the first bills this government introduced (via the Hon. Lea Stevens, minister for health) was a health and community complaints bill to remove health complaints from the Ombudsman and to set up a separate entity which was to be broadened in definition to cover aged-care facilities, community organisations and public and private agencies and the like.

There were concerns raised at the time about the breadth of the definition that was to be applied, the overlap between the federal Aged Care Act and its complaints resolution mechanisms which would potentially give complainants two bites of the cherry, the capturing (even inadvertently) of volunteers who were doing work in this area, and the powers and functions of the proposed ombudsman. There was also a concern about use of the word 'ombudsman' and ultimately it was changed to 'commissioner'.

In introducing this new and very broad role that was to deal with a complaints mechanism, but really a consumer reassurance body, in my view—somebody who was going to be able to deal with individual concerns but also look at systemic review in relation to the health and community services area—a number of mechanisms were placed on this new body, once passed, which had the general endorsement of the opposition in having an agency in this model. That was to have an advisory body that sat with the commissioner, who could be adviser to the minister and of course would have a supervisory role, and the second area was to have a reporting process for annual budgets to the Economic and Finance Committee.

I have heard from the minister and the shadow representative today on this question of that being superfluous, essentially because there is already accountability by giving an annual report to the parliament. The funds that are allocated and applied by this agency are subject to audit by the Auditor-General's Department and the like, and therefore this is really an unnecessary imposition on this body. I hasten to add that that advisory committee has now been axed under the Weatherill government. That does not exist anymore. It has been disposed of, and so that element of scrutiny has gone.

Secondly, what has appeared to me in viewing the annual reports from Ms Sudano's first report across to Mr Tully's recent report is that, more and more, the information which is reported to parliament, especially in the financial aspect, has been reduced, so much so that by the time we get to the 2015 year, we have one page that has three lines on it which gives us a hint as to what the situation is for the funding of this body, largely because it suggests that the information about this is now to be found in the annual report of the health department—talk about Caesar reviewing Caesar. This is the body which has a principal role in making sure that the agencies that deliver health and community services to South Australia, including all of the public sector in this field, is the agency which is providing this information to go in its annual report, no longer in the commissioner's annual report.

So, we only get three lines which tell us what the income is, which for last year was $1.286307 million, and it was applied to salary and wages and to goods and services. That is the entire breakdown of that funding. If we want to know more, we have to go to the health department's annual report and then go to estimates to deal with the health minister. In my view, that is not scrutiny. That is then an absorption (which we have seen in a number of departments; it is not unique in this one) which gets absorbed into the master annual report. The victims of crime annual report is now put in as a little addendum in the Attorney-General's annual report, and so the detail which is provided to us as a parliament is thin to say the least and is getting thinner.

The second thing I want to make a point of, which has been I think highlighted by our shadow representative the member for Morphett, is the dwindling effective budget of this body to actually act efficiently. I, personally, as a local member, have not referred any matters to Mr Tully or been involved in any specifically on behalf of constituents; however, I had a number under Ms Sudano. It was of great concern to me that very often when there was a complaint—I can recall a specialist committing suicide off a major health facility in South Australia and it taking a year just to get a file opened to deal with the concerns that were raised by the deceased's relatives. That is the type of situation we face if we continue to strip a body such as this of funding.

I am very interested to read that it did have an opportunity in the last financial year to undertake 117 investigations under part 6 of the act, including systemic issues which had been raised, some by individual case complaints and some of its own motion, it tells us on page 30 of the report. Examples of systemic investigations included—I will paraphrase a few of them, because they relate to the disability services that are provided—being consistent with the charter and providing safety in disability services. Some of the other interesting ones, which have been around for years—and this is a real concern to me—are that, 14 or 15 years into this government, we are still seeing a situation where there is a need to improve the safety of patients against sexual assault in mental health inpatient facilities. How many times do we have to have that reported every year?

'How public hospitals manage prisoners who are shackled by correctional services staff.' There is not a year that goes past where we do not have some dreadful story across the media relating to that. 'Improving the standard of prison health services.' Hello! Go down and have a look at the women's prison and see what needs to be done there, particularly in relation to those prisoners who have to deal with babies being taken away from them after they have given birth, medication administration, and the like.

The last one is: 'Reliability of blood results across pathology labs.' Interestingly, they say there is also a commitment to service improvements that have occurred in 2014, and number one in the Improvement Monitoring Register for 2014-15 is:

public hospital radiology department—complaint used as a case study for radiology department staff to learn improvements in radiology process to avoid human error in missed injuries.

This is a damning report to suggest that there has been some kind of improvement when, again, year after year, we have cases of people who have either been given too much or not enough radiological treatment or chemotherapy treatment. It is appalling, and I find it very concerning that this is reported in last year's annual report as an improvement. In fact, it is the number one improvement, and yet still we are having these instances which are going to continue to happen unless the government addresses those systemic issues and unless they are listening to people like Mr Tully who obviously sees it as serious enough to start investigating these matters.

They have had some information back from the department which has written this report. The officers who write this report and who support and provide the secretarial services, etc., are in the health department. Obviously, it is going to be, in my view, sanitised and reflect a commitment given by the department, the very group that most often are providing the services that are criticised and of which form the basis of horror stories across our media on a regular basis.

I ask the Minister for Health to understand how important this type of agency is and not to suffocate it with no money, to make sure it is able to report independently to us—there is no board to actually speak to now; you have gotten rid of them—and to make sure that Mr Tully and his people who are working in that field are able to have an unrestricted and without fear or favour access to reform that is necessary to deal with these very serious human complaints.

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING (Playford—Minister for Health, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Health Industries) (11:17): I thank members for their contribution. I thank the opposition for their indication of support for the bill. The bill really just corrects an anomaly in this piece of legislation. It is not required of any other statutory authorities. I can assure the house that parliament was given ample opportunity to scrutinise. What prompted this was actually a resolution of the Economic and Finance Committee which said that they thought they were not appropriately equipped to do what was required of them under the act. I presume that that was a unanimous resolution of the Economic and Finance Committee. I am not aware otherwise, so I presume this bill has support from both sides of the house.

Bill read a second time.

Third Reading

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING (Playford—Minister for Health, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Health Industries) (11:18): I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Bill read a third time and passed.