Grievance Debate

SA Health, ICAC Report

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (15:08): Yesterday, we had a damning report from the ICAC commissioner tabled in this parliament. Since then, we have seen what a complete farce there has been from the government in responding to it, so much so that this is complete negligence by the government of our biggest spending portfolio, and one of the most important areas in public policy for our state is looking after the health care of the citizens of this state.

What did we have as a response from the government's response? Not to give the ICAC commissioner the funds he seeks, not to start a proper independent process and not to even read the report before standing up and announcing a bureaucratic task force to look into it. Frankly, a bureaucratic committee is not going to cut it. This is a negligent and weak response from a negligent and weak government. The fact that we have the admission from the minister and the admission from the Premier that their response was delivered before they had even read the report highlights what negligence we see from this government.

We had some backtracking today. Yesterday, we had the Premier say to the house that he was only two-thirds of the way through the report, 'I myself am about two-thirds of the way through this report.' That was after 2 o'clock, after they announced their response at 11.45. Yet today the Premier stood up in this house and said:

We had ample time to read the report. It was only around 60 pages, plus appendices. I read the report and formed the opinion that the best way to inform the government to take action on the contents of the report was to establish an interagency task force…

So which was it? Yesterday, 'I am only two-thirds of the way through this report,' or today, 'I properly read the report and considered it and then announced the task force 45 minutes after it was tabled.'

Then today we had a statement released by the Attorney-General, which I think could only be described as trying to clarify her comments yesterday, which says that basically her office gave the Minister for Health a copy of this report, not yesterday, not the day before, not the day before that, but on Friday last week, yet the minister told the council yesterday that he had only started reading the report hours after he announced the response to this report.

This is a joke. This is a hopeless government that cannot even take a couple of hours to read a relatively short report. Anybody who reads this report will see that urgent action is needed. Anybody who reads this report will see that the government's denial of the ICAC commissioner's request to properly investigate these matters is nothing other than negligent and nothing other than a blight upon this government.

What we have seen is a complete stuff-up of this response from this government. We do not even know if this went to cabinet or not because we had the health minister telling FIVEaa this morning in a train wreck of an interview—I encourage everybody to listen to it—that it did go to cabinet, yet the Premier stood up today and said that it was not approved by cabinet. So which is it?

We have a bureaucratic task force that has been asked to look into this that includes people from SA Health, the agency that is being criticised. How do we know that those people on the task force are not potentially involved in the critical issues that are being discussed in the report? That would have been something you would think about if you had actually read the report before you announced your response.

Yesterday, we had the minister standing up 45 minutes after the report was tabled announcing their response without reading it, with a bevy of public servants behind him, health executives, none of whom presumably had read the report either if the government is to be believed. There was one noticeable absence, though, and that was the Chief Executive of SA Health, Dr Chris McGowan. He is under independent investigation already. He was missing in action in responding to no doubt what will be the biggest thing that he should be dealing with in his portfolio. There was no response from him. Journalists asked for responses and there was no comment to journalists.

Now we have a disgraceful letter that he has written to the upper house committee which is inquiring into his statements and looking at his statements and which asked him to come back and explain his statements. He agreed to come back on Monday of next week; he agreed to that earlier this week. He has now sent a letter saying that he will not be attending on Monday next week. What a joke and what a disgrace that this government is so unaccountable.

What a disgrace for the patients of South Australia, who have seen ramping double under this government's watch, who have seen beds cut, who have seen doctors and nurses cut while we see just a bureaucratic fiddle instead of a proper ICAC investigation.