Ambulances, Mount Gambier

Ms PRATT (Frome) (14:56): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Can the minister update the house in relation to the availability of ambulances in Mount Gambier? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Ms PRATT: The opposition has been advised that on Tuesday night a person had a seizure while at a local hotel; 000 was called and advice was given that no ambulance was available in Mount Gambier; instead, a crew from Millicent arrived over an hour later. At the same time, it was reported that four ambulances were back at base.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:57): Thank you very much to the member for Frome for her question, and I'm very happy to update the house in relation to this government's commitment to additional ambulances in the Limestone Coast and specifically at Mount Gambier.

As part of our plans that we took to the election was an additional 350 ambulance officers and paramedics across the state, and a critical component of that was additional paramedics and ambulance officers based in Mount Gambier. We understand that there is a significant need for more ambulance officers and paramedics to be based in Mount Gambier.

I am very happy to follow up the specific details the member refers to, and if she is happy to provide further details I'm very happy to work with her in relation to that, but it absolutely highlights the need that we know there has to be more paramedics. This was something that was raised with us in opposition. Time and again clearly there were more needs for paramedics and ambulance officers right across the state, and where there were a small number of ambulance officers that were committed previously in the former government the Limestone Coast missed out. There was not one extra ambulance officer or paramedic that was committed to the Limestone Coast.

That was a deep concern to a number of people. I know it was a concern to the member for Mount Gambier, who raised it with us as well—that we saw increasing need for ambulance services across the Limestone Coast and that those commitments weren't being made to additional paramedics. The Premier when he was opposition leader made a visit down to Mount Gambier before the election and made that commitment that we would provide those extra ambulance officers and paramedics, and it was very welcomed by the community down there.

We have set forth a very detailed schedule for those 350 extra paramedics to be delivered—and ambulance officers—across the state. We have been, in fact, ahead of schedule of what we said in the election of when they would be delivered, and we have in fact published that information. It's available for all of our staff to clearly know when those additional crews are coming online, including the additional crews coming on in Mount Gambier and other regional locations. In particular, the Upper Spencer Gulf is the other area where we have committed additional paramedics as well.

That means that we are going to be able to communicate clearly ahead of time to our staff where those opportunities are going to be for additional staff to be recruited to give us the best opportunity of getting those paramedics and ambulance officers in place in those regional locations, because obviously we know there's added complexity sometimes in recruiting to regional areas as well.

SA Ambulance has been working very hard on putting on the additional staff we have put on so far, and we were very happy to release the figures earlier this week. We have had an additional 141 extra paramedics and ambulance officers on the road since we have been elected to get to that full 350, which includes the regional crews such as Mount Gambier, such as the Upper South-East as well as through the Keith and Bordertown area—where there are additional paramedics—and through the Upper Spencer Gulf through our commitments in places such as Port Augusta, Whyalla, Peterborough, as well as commitments in Wallaroo. All those paramedics are important.

We clearly understand as well that we can't just have additional resources available inside the city area; we do need them in the country areas as well. Clearly, there is a connection between making sure you've got availability of ambulance resources in the country and the city. We have heard the calls from the community, we have heard the calls from the paramedics and we will be delivering on those extra resources as we committed to do.