COVID-19 Hospital Response

Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (14:31): My question is to the Premier. Is the Premier making judgements about the preparedness of our hospital system without any knowledge of the ramping statistics we currently have here in South Australia?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:31): I thank the leader for his question. On the contrary, we have been paying a huge amount of attention to making sure—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The Premier has the call.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: Thank you very much, sir. As I was saying, we have been paying a huge amount of attention to what we need to have in place to be COVID-ready as we lift those borders. We have already announced a $123 million COVID-ready package, which is supplying additional capacity to hospital beds in South Australia, around 400 beds. Some of those are in our hospitals, our own hospitals and health facilities, and some of them are in the private sector. Of course, some of them are created by moving patients who are currently in a hospital bed to an out-of-hospital care environment in their own property.

We have also committed to taking on the graduating nurse cohort from this year—which I understand is about 1,200 people—which will take the additional doctors, nurses, paramedics and midwives in South Australia to an additional 1,600 or so health professionals in South Australia. In addition to that, as you would be more than aware, sir, we are spending a huge amount of money upgrading our hospital facilities in South Australia, in particular our emergency department capacity and capability.

They were left in a parlous state by the previous government. We are addressing that with very significant funding, with more than $1 billion going into—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Lee is warned.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: We are putting very significant additional capacity and capability into our health system in South Australia. Currently, we have a capital budget in excess of $1 billion. As you would be aware, sir, we have also moved the budget for Health from $5.8 billion per year when we came into government to a massive $7.4 billion in the current budget—very significant increases in resources going into the operations, the capital budget and of course preparing—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The Premier has the call.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: We are making sure we are COVID-ready in South Australia with a massive $123 million investment in our hospitals. Of course, the number one thing that can be done in South Australia is to get vaccinated, and we are doing extraordinarily well in South Australia. In the last three or four weeks, I think we have had—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Premier, please ignore the interjections. The member for Lee is warned for a second time.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: As I said, we have been very pleased that the people of South Australia have presented themselves for vaccination. We've currently got I think more than 100,000 doses administered for each week over the last three or four weeks. This is very important. It is a shared responsibility. Yes, of course the government needs to put resources into place, but we are working with the people of South Australia, who are getting vaccinated in record numbers in South Australia. South Australians are doing their part.

That's why we know that on 23 November we get to a position where we will have additional resources into our health system and we will also have the vaccination rate at that 80 per cent double-vaccinated for those 16 and over, and that's when the evidence suggests that we should be easing those borders.

We come at it from a very different position from other jurisdictions. Some jurisdictions, of course, have higher level daily numbers at the moment, so they already have a seeded situation. We don't have that seeded situation. We have had COVID come into our state, but we have been very fortunate. Working with the people of South Australia, we have been able to make sure that doesn't translate into a cluster or community transmission, so we do start from a different position. We've got to make sure that we are ready and that's why we have made this very, very significant investment.