Modbury Hospital

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:22): Can the minister perhaps explain to the house then why he stated in this house on 11 February, and I quote:

We made a change so that there will be an emergency theatre available to overnight patients who have elective surgery for at least six months while we assess this program.

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING (Playford—Minister for Health, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Health Industries) (14:23): The opposition leader is talking about two different things because the problem with the opposition leader is he reads questions that have been prepared for him by other people and he doesn't take the trouble to actually understand what he is asking. If he put some effort into actually understanding what he was asking, he might actually get somewhere, but he doesn't, he just reads a script.

What I was referring to was the issue with regard to patients undertaking elective surgery who deteriorated overnight and the availability of them to get access to a theatre if they made a sudden deterioration overnight. Originally, the plan was that those patients, if that happened, would be moved to the Lyell McEwin Hospital to go back to theatre. We discussed it with the surgeons and the anaesthetists who had concerns about that particular model and, listening to the feedback of the doctors involved, we decided that we may—

Mr Marshall: You said six months.

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING: You don't even understand what you are asking. So, in consultation with the doctors about this matter, what we did was we made an emergency theatre and a surgical team available on call to be called in in the event that a patient deteriorated—an elective surgery patient, not an emergency surgery patient—an elective surgery patient—

Mr Gardner: That's what he said.

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING: —had a deterioration overnight.

The SPEAKER: The member for Morialta is warned for the second time.

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING: That is what the Leader of the Opposition is referring to. And because he does not undertake the effort to understand these issues, because he just reads from a script, he does not understand that that is different from emergency surgery.