Grievance Debate

Health Funding

Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (15:21): I appreciate the opportunity to be able to make a few remarks following quite an extraordinary question time. You cannot help but reflect on a question time like the one today and think how extraordinarily frustrated you would be if you were a punter sitting at home taking the time to watch this online.

Today, the opposition sought to ask a suite of very important and genuine questions of the Premier regarding important matters of state and policy, and in almost every single instance we had this Premier just being that little bit too clever by half, thinking that he was some sort of tactful politician circumventing the question, deliberately not answering, when people at home want to know what is going on in our health system at the moment.

Right now as we speak, from the most recent statistics that have been made available, ambulance ramping, which is probably the best demonstrator of the health of our hospital system, has quadrupled in comparison to the same months four years ago—an over 400 per cent increase in ambulance ramping presided over by this government.

So when the Premier then takes an opportunity to start to espouse all the substantial capital upgrades that are addressing the ambulance ramping crisis, the irony is not lost on us on this side of the house that almost all of them—almost all of them—are capital upgrades that were commenced by the former Labor government.

The member for Newland would well know that the Modbury Hospital expansion was entirely initiated, entirely upgraded and initiated by the former Labor government. People in the western suburbs would well know that the $250 million capital upgrade of The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, which we are still waiting for, commenced under the former Labor government. We know that the $40 million-plus upgrade of the Lyell Mac, again formerly commenced under the former Labor government.

Then, of course, we have the temerity of the Premier to refer to what is going on at Flinders Medical Centre. At Flinders Medical Centre, the government are banging on about their $8 million worth of capital works, but that is in comparison to $370 million expended by the former Labor government. So you are 2 per cent of the way there when it comes to spending money on Flinders.

Even if you are listening at home, you will understand that dollars being thrown around and figures being thrown around by this government, trying to claim credit for other people's work, does not get you very far when you know that you have presided over a 400 per cent increase in ramping—a 400 per cent increase. And the member for Newland, the member for Unley and the member for Colton are laughing; they are laughing at a 400 per cent increase in ramping.

If you take the time to speak to someone who works in a hospital at the moment, you will understand the extraordinary pain those workers are going through, not just because of the level of toil they are suffering from being worked in an incredibly difficult situation but because of the genuine heartache they experience when they cannot perform their job of looking after their patients. Why? It is because of this government's wholehearted incompetence: redundancies for frontline workers, putting corporate liquidators in charge, overseeing a cut to the Ambulance Service when every other single state is increasing funding. That is their policy, and their legacy is a hospital system in absolute crisis.

The other piece of news that came out today was a recognition that this government is very far detached from its so-called constituency of small to medium businesses. Today, none other than our peak business body, Business SA, actively disendorsed this government's policy of total deregulation and actively endorsed the Labor Party's policy of sensible deregulation. So here we have the proponents of small business being actively abandoned by one industry group after the other, utterly detached from the real-world experience of small business.

We understand that small businesses are the architects of this economy. We know that retail is important, not just those people working in the stores but all the producers who put goods on the shelves. We stand with those small businesses, we stand with hospital workers, and we stand with the—

The Hon. D.G. Pisoni interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Mr MALINAUSKAS: —patients who are genuinely concerned. I wish I had more time to respond to the member for Unley's reference to land tax, but we will not go to the next election with a vacuous policy, we will go with a real one.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Time has expired, leader—and, of course, we do not respond to interjections.