SA Health, ICAC Report

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (14:29): My question is to the Premier. How can the Premier be 100 per cent convinced, as he said, that the task force will address the issues of the ICAC report when he couldn't even tell the house the names of all the members of the task force on it?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:29): I have every confidence that the task force will be able to provide government information and advice regarding an action plan or an implementation plan following on from the receipt of the commissioner's report to parliament. I think it's a very important report, as I have stated publicly and repeatedly. We thank the commissioner for his report. To be quite honest—

Mr Malinauskas: It's so important that you didn't read it.

The SPEAKER: The leader is warned.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: To be quite honest, sir, the issue—

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan interjecting:

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

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: To be honest, sir, many of the issues which were raised in this report were issues which were well known to the government. In fact, they would have been well known to the opposition. The Leader of the Opposition, of course, was the health minister. Many of the issues that were raised in the report go back for many years. They deal with very important issues, like the administration of data.

We know that there have been many problems in terms of data and IT systems and record keeping in the health department for a long period of time. We saw, firsthand, the debacle that was the implementation of the Oracle system under the previous government. Potentially, the member for Kaurna was an adviser to the health minister at the time of the Oracle debacle: Oracle debacle 1, Oracle debacle 2 and then, of course, there was the EPAS debacle—and we are still fixing up the mess of EPAS now.

There have been major problems in this department for an extended period of time. What is different now, and why I have confidence that we will fix up the mess of Labor, is that we are shining a light on this. This is not a problem that we are kicking under the carpet; this is one that we are exposing. We have tabled the report at the very first opportunity. There has been no redaction in our document. It's gone right out to every single person in this state.

More than that, we have been working on the implementation—the cure plan, if you like—for the failure of the health system under the previous administration since the very first day that we came into office, and we are very proud of the work that we have done in that area. Today was another classic example. The member asked the question: why should I have confidence? Well, take a look at what we announced today.

That's proof positive of a government that is investing $86 million to fix the problem which unequivocally was caused by the failure of the previous government to understand the capacity requirements of the ED at the Flinders Medical Centre and then to compound that problem by reducing the services at the adjacent Noarlunga Hospital and then closing the Repat Hospital. So it was a very obvious requirement to increase the capacity.

We are very proud that today, when I was down at Flinders Medical Centre with members from this house and also the minister from the other place, we were able to announce not only a doubling of the adult capacity within the ED department, which is a very substantial increase, but also 12 new acute medical beds at Noarlunga Hospital, which will allow for the upgrade in the services provided at that hospital.

Of course, one of the problems associated with the Flinders Medical Centre—and this is one of the reasons why it gives me confidence that we will be able to rectify the problems, because that's exactly and precisely what we are already doing—one of the reasons that we were having compounding problems at the Flinders Medical Centre was that there was a massive transfer from Noarlunga Hospital to the Flinders Medical Centre. There weren't adequate resources there because the previous government—and this is a statement of fact—closed the acute medical beds at Noarlunga Hospital, massively downgrading it and pushing all those patients to the Flinders Medical Centre because they didn't think about it.

We have taken the time to come up with a plan that is going to rectify the situation, and that's what gives me the confidence that we are going to be able to fix up their mess.