Repatriation General Hospital

Ms HABIB (Elder) (16:56): My question is to the Premier. Will the Premier outline what steps—

Mr Mullighan interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Lee is called to order for the second and final time and he is warned.

Ms HABIB: My question is to the Premier. Will the Premier outline what steps the government is taking to ensure the Repat site at Daw Park can continue to be used as a health precinct?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (16:56): I thank the member for Elder for her question. I would like to particularly thank the member for Elder and the member for Waite for the campaigns that they ran on behalf of the people of their electorates to protect that site and to keep it as a genuine health precinct. Let me tell you that in previous times the former government said that they had promised that they would never ever close the Repat—never ever. That was the commitment that they made: they would never ever close the Repat.

Well, they broke the heart of the people of South Australia when they made a decision to completely and utterly ignore, in an arrogant way, the wishes of the people of the southern suburbs and, more broadly, the veteran community across South Australia. This was despite the fact that veterans camped out overnight for months and months and months, during the winter months, on the steps of the parliament making their point that this was a valuable site that should be kept open. Did they pay any attention? No.

Then there was a petition which was put forward by the people of South Australia. It was actually the largest petition in the history of South Australia. More than 100,000 signatures, more than 100,000 people said this is a bad decision, but did those opposite pay any attention whatsoever? The reality is no. They paid for the consequences of it, by the way, because the former member for Waite lost his seat and the former member for Elder lost her seat.

The reality is that the people of South Australia had a voice on this issue and they were ignored by the former government. Well, we are not going to ignore the people of the southern suburbs. It's a growing population there. We want to respect their need for improved services in the southern suburbs. Those opposite ended up spending hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money duplicating services just a few kilometres down the road because they were zealously adhering to this concept of reducing or concentrating metropolitan hospital services just on the three main sites. We reject that. The people of South Australia reject this as policy, and we have taken a very good set of policies to the election to build up services at the Noarlunga Hospital, to build up and restore services at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital and to massively improve services at the Modbury Hospital.

We are going to keep the Repat site as a genuine health precinct. The Minister for Health and Wellbeing has not approved the master plan which was put forward by ACH, the company that had entered into the contract with the former government, so that effectively terminated the contract which was in place. We are now going to make sure that we have a genuine health precinct, and we are going to have a combination of services on that site.

Some of the commitments that we made to the people of South Australia in the lead-up to the election included making sure that the hydrotherapy pool could be accessed by people in the local community. We also said that we wanted to look at the surgical facilities on that site and reactivate them where possible and as quickly as possible. The former government left us with a very messy situation with a massive blow-out in elective surgery waiting times in South Australia. We do not accept that, and we will be utilising the surgical facilities on that site as quickly as we can to start chewing through that very long elective surgery waiting time.

In addition, we are going to re-purpose Ward 18 for older persons' mental health in South Australia. We made a strong commitment for a 35-bed facility there for tier 6 and tier 7 older persons living with mental health issues in South Australia. We made strong commitments to improve services and to keep the Repat as a genuine health precinct.