Country Health Services

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (14:45): My question is to the Premier. What does the Premier say to Strathalbyn publican Stacey, who spoke on the steps of Parliament House just an hour ago, whose dear friend passed away in her pub waiting for an ambulance? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr PICTON: On 11 July 2020, Stacey's friend Stephen went to dinner at her Strathalbyn hotel. He was found choking and unable to breathe. Stephen passed away after waiting 32 minutes for an ambulance. The government has closed the Strathalbyn emergency department and Stacey said the Strathalbyn ambulance is regularly not in the Strathalbyn region due to other cases and ramping.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:45): I thank the member for Kaurna for raising this case. Again, we can only express our sincere apology to the people who were affected by this outage or this inability to provide service, and any others. That is why we are 100 per cent committed to putting those resources in place at the moment.

One of the areas we are looking at, at the moment, is our country services. SA Health is doing some work at the moment regarding ambulance cover in regional South Australia. I await that advice and look forward to providing improved services across regional South Australia. We are putting money into our regional hospitals. You would note, sir, that on coming to government there was an urgent backlog in terms of maintenance in country hospitals that, quite frankly, was staggering. We addressed that in our very first budget. We have been very significantly ramping up the capability in our hospitals in regional South Australia which was sadly neglected for the 16 years of the previous government.

I think there are very few electorates right across South Australia that either haven't had or are about to have a very significant improvement to their healthcare sectors. One of the things that we did on coming to government was to decentralise regional health, Country Health in South Australia, moving away from Country Health SA administered from the central office in Adelaide to establishing six country-based local health networks.

We have established boards that have good-quality representatives from right across the community, clinicians and, importantly, on each of those an Indigenous representative. They have made, I think, big strides, but it is still early days. That has really only been up and running for the past couple of years, and I think we are getting good value from the input that we are getting from regional South Australia. But, as you would appreciate, sir, there is much more work to be done.

A lot of it has to be planned and thought out in consultation with clinicians. We know we get the best results from doing that, and we also know that we get the best results with country areas working together to share resources, and that's why the establishment of the decentralised country LHNs has been such an improvement.

I first saw this model when I was in New Zealand several years ago with the establishment of their district health boards over there. They had broken the entire country into 17 district health boards, so those boards had a good understanding right down to what was happening in local areas, and that's precisely what we have tried to replicate in South Australia.

Although it is still early days, and I am not sure when this incident that the member for Karuna referred to occurred, what I do know is that the methodology for addressing these issues and being close to the action is being addressed and, of course, as a government we are providing record investment into the health system—not a 2 per cent, 4 per cent CPI-type increase, we are talking $5.8 billion to $7.4 billion. That is a very substantial increase and, on top of that, as I said, we have announced a further $120 million plus going into our COVID-ready package.

The SPEAKER: I share with members that, doorknocking in Charleston, I heard that story myself from the ambulance officer involved, and I wish to thank that officer for sharing that story with me. It was very difficult information to listen to.