Grievance Debate

SA Ambulance Service

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (15:09): Yesterday, we saw revealed a very startling report into what has happened in our SA Ambulance Service over the past few months. From October to December last year, there were 17 adverse incidents in our health system that involved nine patient deaths that were investigated. We found out today that it was not actually the government, but SA Ambulance, of its own volition, that asked Associate Professor Peter Hibbert to inquire into those deaths, and the minister and the Premier were only told afterwards. That report has now been released.

What we have learnt is that the minister and, we believe, the Premier were informed of this matter back in December. That is up to three months ago. The public of South Australia was not informed of this very serious patient issue in South Australia and they were not informed of what this could mean for their ambulance services here in South Australia. This is very different from the test that we had from the government when they were in opposition. Stephen Wade, as the health minister, went out time and time again and said that he would deliver transparency and he would make sure that if there were errors in the health system he would report them immediately.

Just before the election, in fact, we had an incident at Lyell McEwin Hospital, where the government released within four days an issue that had happened in respect of the cleaning of bottles. Stephen Wade came out and said that that was an outrage. He said there was a 'culture of cover-up' happening in the health system because how dare it take four days for the public to be informed of a health issue, a safety issue, in our hospital system.

What happens with him? He is in government now and it is perfectly fine for him to hold on to information for three months about very serious issues that have happened in our ambulance services, issues that potentially led to the deaths of nine patients. Nothing could be more serious, yet the Premier and the health minister think that it is perfectly fine for them to sit on that information and not tell the public of South Australia. What else do they know that they are not telling the public? What else has been happening that they are not revealing to the public that we might only find out months or years down the track, or maybe even never?

This is a complete change from their previous perspective on supposed transparency, a complete change by Stephen Wade and the Premier's own definition that it looks exactly like a culture of cover-up—something he used to complain about. I am particularly concerned about the fact that the families were not informed of this matter. Neither the health minister nor the Premier sought to meet with the families. Today, it is very fuzzy as to whether all the families have been briefed on this matter. In fact, the Premier and the health minister seem to be suggesting that there are some families that have not been contacted.

Why were they not contacted back in December when the health minister was first informed of this matter? When the health minister was informed—and potentially the Premier as well, although he could not quite remember—about these serious patient issues, why were the families of this cluster of nine patient deaths not told about the circumstances of what happened to them? Why were they not also asked to be involved in the review, to provide evidence, to provide their circumstances, to have an opportunity to be heard? Clearly, that has not happened. The Premier has been unable to explain how that happened. I think that is a very serious error that the government has made.

The other thing the government did upon being told of this matter back in December is they decided to cut resources from the health system, instead of saying, 'Wow, we have been presented with this information, which shows a very serious issue in our health system. We need to make sure that the health system has the resources to address this issue.' While they were being provided this information, we had cuts to beds at Hampstead, we had cuts to beds at the Women's and Children's Hospital and we had cuts to beds at Flinders Medical Centre.

What that has led to now is an even more serious situation happening this month. February is usually a quiet time in the hospital system, but this month has been remarkable. Our doctors, nurses and paramedics are calling for urgent action and the government's only response is to close beds, privatise SA Pathology and close community health services. They are not fixing the health service as they said they would. They are cutting it, they are closing it, they are privatising it and they should hang their heads in shame.