SA Health, ICAC Report

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (14:50): My question is to the Premier. Does the Premier believe it was acceptable that the Minister for Health and Wellbeing had the ICAC report since Friday last week but did not read it before announcing the task force response yesterday?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:50): The task force response is a very important response and it means that we are getting on with exactly and precisely what we need to. I don't know whether those opposite want us to read it earlier or later, establish the task force before or after—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, members on my left!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: They have not made their point clear. In fact, yesterday they were on one tack and today they are on another tack. The reality is—

Dr Close interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The deputy leader is called to order.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: —this is typical of what we have had from the Australian Labor Party for an extended period of time, which is petty pointscoring rather than getting on with the fundamental guts issue of fixing health in South Australia. It is no wonder that the health system was in such a mess when those opposite were looking after it. By contrast, we have welcomed the report that was provided by the commissioner. There is plenty of information in there that would suggest there is a lot of work to do. As is very clear—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! We have the question.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: —in the report, many of these very substantial issues go back for a very long period of time. What we should be asking, of course, is: what did those opposite do to address some of these fundamental issues? We know what we have done. We have been very clear on that. We have immediately established—

Mr Malinauskas interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, leader!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: We have immediately appointed KordaMentha to look at the fundamental problem that existed right across SA Health, which was the Central Adelaide Local Health Network. Nobody in South Australia knew the magnitude of the problems that existed there.

Ms Hildyard interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Reynell is on two warnings.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: We were heading towards overbudget expenditure in excess of $300 million. My understanding is that the remediation work done by KordaMentha, putting a lot of the systems in place that were missing—the financial systems that were missing—is now well underway. A lot of what we are talking about, and that the commissioner highlights, is around system failures, the lack of traceability, and information being made available.

I am the first to admit there is a huge amount of additional work to be done, but I am satisfied with the progress that is being made on this and I am very proud that we have acted decisively to establish the interagency task force. This is being chaired by none other than the Chief Executive of the Department of the Premier and Cabinet. They will have representatives on that committee from the Department of Treasury and Finance, the Department for Health and Wellbeing and, of course, the Commissioner for Public Sector Employment I think is also there. But it's not limited to that: the chief executive himself can invite others to participate on that task force.

This is an important task force and they have an important body of work to do. We have asked them to respond to the government. Are you ready to listen to this one, leader? Because you have asked the question three times and it would be embarrassing if you asked it a fourth time. We have asked the task force to respond by the end of the year, being this year, which I think is a very short period of time. But I think it's important that we get on with doing everything we possibly can to fix the health system in South Australia.

It's easy to kick the can down the road. We have seen the previous government do this on numerous occasions across virtually every single portfolio in government. We are not prepared to do that. It's a very important area of public policy and we plan to make improvements as soon as possible.

Ms COOK: Point of order.

The SPEAKER: Premier, there is a point of order. If you could be seated for one moment. For debate?

Ms COOK: For debate: 98.

The SPEAKER: Yes, consistent with my earlier rulings. The Premier has concluded his answer, so we are going to go to the members for Frome, Kaurna and then Narungga.