Motions

Hospitals, Car Parking

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (16:45): I move:

That this house—

(a) condemns the Marshall Liberal government for its massive increases in hospital car parking costs for patients, families and hospital staff;

(b) notes that these cost increases are a blatant broken election promise;

(c) condemns that nurses and cleaners will face increases of 129 per cent in car parking costs, effectively a cut to their take-home pay; and

(d) condemns the 20 per cent cost increases at public hospitals for patients and families, and the removal of the two-hours free parking at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

There was a very clear election promise from the Marshall government at the last election; it promised more affordable hospital car parking for patients and their families. That is now a completely broken promise.

That election policy clearly stated that the Marshall Liberal government, if they were elected, would be cutting the cost of parking at public hospitals. They said that the cost of parking at public hospitals can quickly become a significant expense for patients, their carers and visitors and that this is especially the case for people who have to make frequent or prolonged visits to particular hospitals. They outlined a policy—in particular, they went on to outline it in the Adelaide Advertiser—where the then opposition health spokesperson, Stephen Wade, said that people were being 'fleeced' by hospital car parking charges. He said:

The cost of car parking at Adelaide's metropolitan hospitals is a significant financial burden on many patients, carers and relatives at what is often a very difficult time…The high cost of car parking at our hospitals adds unnecessary stress…Affordable car parking fees will help ease the financial and emotional strain of people attending hospitals as patients, carers or visitors. Trying to complete a hospital visit within a strict time frame can interfere with a person's capacity to support a loved one…It's affordable to provide them immediate relief from a grotesque increase in charges at the RAH.

The promise was very clearly to reduce hospital car parking rates by $3 million. This, of course, was before the election. The government was then elected on the basis of that promise.

What the people of South Australia cannot stand is when people are very clearly told, in a policy before the election, that there will be more affordable car parking and then, within a year or so afterwards, there is a policy released that does the exact opposite: there is a budget revenue measure that completely breaks that election promise and hikes up the cost of car parking for patients, family members and, importantly, hospital staff as well.

That election promise was completely obliterated before the eyes of the South Australian public. It is a completely broken promise because, instead of a $3 million cut to hospital car parking fees, we had a staggering $33 million increase to hospital car parking fees. Not only does that affect patients, family members, carers and visitors, it also affects our hardworking staff, our nurses, our orderlies, our cleaners, the other staff within the hospital system, who have no other option but to park at the hospital to get to work to care for people, to look after people, in our public hospital system.

For staff members, the increase worked out not at 2 per cent, not at 5 per cent, not even at 10 per cent and not even at 50 per cent. The increase per year for our hardworking staff members of the health system worked out at 129 per cent. That is a staggering increase, a staggering broken promise. It means for every nurse, every cleaner, every orderly and everyone who works in the kitchen an increase of $725 per year just to get to work, just to go there and care and look after and help support the public hospital system. That is nothing other than the Premier, Rob Lucas and Stephen Wade putting their hands in the pay packets of those nurses and other staff and taking that $725 per year from those staff members.

For patients, we saw increases ranging between 14 per cent and up to 25 per cent on hospital car parking for visitors. These are people who are seeing their loved ones. These are people who are going to outpatient appointments. These are people who are going there to care for people who might be in hospital for a long time. They might have to go a number of different times per day. They might have to go every week or so for follow-up appointments. All of them are being stung now by this blatant broken promise at the last election that has seen them facing these dramatic increases in hospital car parking.

You cannot usually get to our hospitals other than going to the car parks because we know that at the same time the government has been setting about cutting bus trips as well. We also know that a lot of the time people are in hospitals at odd hours, and particularly our staff work there at very odd hours around the clock. They cannot catch public transport to and from work. If they finish a late shift at 11pm, 12am or 1am, there is not going to be a bus to take them to the many various locations that they might live. They need to drive to work; hence, this is basically taking their money out of their pay packet and giving it back to the government.

Staff members across the health system have been outraged by this. Patients across the health system have been outraged by this. We have had many thousands of people contact us, sign petitions and write to members of parliament, outraged about these increases and this broken promise. To add to this, at The QEH, where a new car park has been built and the existing car park is about to close, they will take away the two hours of free car parking when that existing car park closes at The QEH.

There is a double effect: not only do they have the up to 25 per cent increase in costs for people to visit the hospital but they are also removing the two hours free. At The QEH, there are a number of different times. If you are there for over two hours to visit someone or to go to an outpatient appointment, your cost changes from $7.50 up to $21, then the government increased it again from 1 January up to $24. The increase for somebody at The QEH for a two to three-hour stay has gone from $7.50 to $24.

There are so many people in our society, in the western suburbs in particular, who cannot afford to pay $24 every time they go to hospital. That is a big sting to them, particularly at a time when we are seeing a number of the social supports being removed. This is an attack on those people, a blatant revenue-raising measure on those people in the western suburbs. We had another increase as well that happened just in July this year. There was no announcement about this, but they increased further the Royal Adelaide Hospital parking costs, which meant that there was an up to 25 per cent increase for patients and visitors.

The daily car parking rate for five hours or more at the Royal Adelaide increased up to $30, and it had been $24 only just over six months before that. Before the election, we had Stephen Wade complaining about the cost of parking at the RAH, saying that people were being fleeced with hospital car parking costs and saying that it was adding a significant burden to people, now afterwards here we have him increasing those costs, adding more burden and fleecing people more. When they are in quite dire need sometimes in needing hospital care, they are being stung and stung.

We have also seen weekly car parking rates increase again for long-stay patient families at many other hospitals, such as Lyell McEwin Hospital, Modbury Hospital, The Queen Elizabeth Hospital and Flinders Medical Centre, by 21 per cent. In December 2019, it was $38 for weekly car parking for long-stay patients. That has now increased to $46 at those hospitals as well.

This is an absolutely disgraceful policy. There is absolutely no justification for it whatsoever, particularly when it comes to the 129 per cent increase for staff. What is the justification that the government has offered? On the issue of patients, they said, 'Labor failed to increase hospital car parking previously, so we had to step in and increase it.' I am sorry, but you were the ones complaining that it was too high previously and now you have jacked it up by up to 25 per cent across the board. We kept those prices down. You are the ones increasing them. It is completely against your election promise.

The only justification or spin that they can come up with for the 129 per cent staggering increase for our hardworking nurses in the health system is to say, 'This is now akin to if you got a public transport card for a month and that is an equivalent cost for them.' Let's look at a couple of factors about that. One factor is that people cannot catch public transport to these hospitals if they are doing a night shift.

Hospitals are 24-hour operations. Firstly, those staff working around the clock should not be putting themselves in the position of potential safety risks and, secondly, there are not the bus routes to get them home when they are finishing a night shift, or perhaps even starting a shift, well after our public transport system provides for, so that is a completely bogus argument. This is nothing other than a complete revenue measure.

There has never been a time when we have, as a community, as a country, as a world, been more acknowledging of the hard work of our health professionals. Nurses, our allied health professionals and all the other staff, including cleaners, who work in hospitals have never been valued more, so it is completely unfathomable that the government would continue with this policy.

We did force them into a position where they have now offered free hospital car parking during the pandemic. We called for that on 29 March. Two weeks after that, they announced it; however, they capped it at a dollar value of $101 per month. Many staff do not even get access to these staff car parking passes, particularly at the Royal Adelaide Hospital where the daily cost is $30 per day, so that is going to crank up to $100 very, very quickly. In June 2019, CALHN told The Advertiser that only 3,778 of the 6,500 RAH staff had a permit, so clearly there are a number of staff in that category who are not going to get access to that.

But what we saw very clearly in the state budget yesterday is that this is going to end off a cliff. This is only going to exist for this financial year, so there are only a few months left when staff will have access to this cheaper car parking. After that, they are back onto these 129 per cent increases and back onto that extra $725 a year that is being taken out of their pay packet and given to the state Treasury, the Premier, Rob Lucas and Stephen Wade. Very clearly, there is a huge betrayal of the people of South Australia here. Very clearly, we have a government that is out of touch with those people who use hospitals and those staff who use hospitals. The fact is they are not going to be able to use public transport.

About a month ago, we even had the indignity of the health minister revealing that early planning for the new Women's and Children's Hospital was going to involve a cut in car parking. One of the biggest complaints of people at that hospital at the moment is the lack of car parking available and the government is planning to cut the car parking instead of increasing it. He said, 'That's fine. People might choose to catch public transport.'

How out of touch would you have to be with the lives of families across South Australia to think that, if you have a loved one, a little kid, who needs to go to hospital, you are going to catch the bus to get there? How out of touch would you have to be? That is completely the wrong idea, but this is consistent with this out-of-touch idea on hospital car parking.

We are going to fight this every way up to the next election, but we should have this motion passed by this house. If the government were fair dinkum about their promises at the last election instead of wanting to obliterate them as they have done in the past budget, then they would support this motion, support scrapping these huge increases for families, for nurses, for allied health professionals, for other staff, and make sure that it is more affordable, as they promised, instead of a whopping $33 million more expensive and return to the days when they said it was going to be cheaper rather than more expensive. I hope we will see some courage from those members of the Liberal Party, but somehow I doubt that will be the case.