Question Time

Ambulance Ramping

Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (14:07): My question is to the Premier. Why has the Premier failed to meet his commitment that his state budget will fix ramping almost immediately? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr MALINAUSKAS: In June, the Premier told a press conference that his budget would 'definitely fix ramping' and that that would happen 'almost immediately'. Since then, South Australia has had three of the four worst months of ramping in the history of South Australia.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:07): I thank the Leader of the Opposition for bringing this important matter to the attention of the chamber. He is quite right: the level of ramping in South Australia at the moment is unacceptably high. Of course, it was the Labor Party which brought ramping to South Australia, and we need to do everything we can as a government to make sure that we can eliminate it as quickly as possible.

As per usual, the Leader of the Opposition selectively quotes. In fact, he wasn't at that press conference. I was at that press conference, and I made it clear when asked a question by a journalist, 'When would we start to see improvements?' and I said, 'Almost immediately,' and I made those statements because we are very significantly investing money into the health system, which we inherited from those opposite.

Quite frankly, I think most people appreciate that there are no simple fixes to the situation that exists in South Australia at the moment. In fact, the situation that we have is not peculiar to our state. In fact, if we look around the entire country at the moment we have significant issues in virtually every single jurisdiction. However, I think South Australia is in a better position than most places to be able to address this as quickly as possible because we were already significantly underway with the expansion and the change into the model of care that we have in South Australia.

I have been through this previously in this chamber. I'm happy to go through it again if that's the nature of the question, but I think in terms of answering the specifics of this question I have addressed that we find ramping unacceptable. Secondly, we put a massive amount of additional resources into solving the problem that currently exists, but there is a national problem at the moment, exacerbated by COVID, and we are doing everything we can to address it.

The Leader of the Opposition is quite aware of what additional money the government has put in since coming to government in the most recent budget. We will continue to invest in this area because we do want to eliminate ramping in South Australia and want to do it as soon as possible.