Grievance Debate

Ambulance Ramping

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA (Hartley—Leader of the Opposition) (15:24): I rise today to again talk about the biggest lie that was ever told to the people of South Australia by this Labor Party. Of course, I am talking about the biggest lie that was told by the South Australian Labor Party to the people of South Australia before the 2022 state election and that was that they would fix ramping and the ramping crisis.

In July 2024, the Premier delivered the worst month of ramping in our state's history. We lost a total of 5,539 hours on the ramp, and that was after this Labor government put our health system into an unprecedented 10-week Code Yellow internal emergency which saw elective surgeries right across our electorates cancelled for thousands of South Australians, bringing the elective surgery waitlist to over 20,000 patients right across our state. What difference did this Code Yellow make? It does not look like absolutely anything at all. This government went on to deliver the second worst month of ramping in our state's history in August 2024—a grand total of 5,284 hours. That brings the total ramping hours under this government to nearly 110,000 hours in just the first two years or so of this government.

Under the former Liberal government, we had 74,991 hours across the entire four years and during that time we also had a global pandemic. But this Labor government told the people of South Australia to vote a certain way, that people had to vote Labor like their life depended on it. Now, even one of the biggest backers of the now government at the time, the Ambulance Employees Association, has lost faith in this Premier and this health minister.

Not even the Premier's Delivery Unit can spin their way out of this one. They have now simply given up. The goalposts, as we have seen recently, have actually moved. No longer is the government planning to fix the ramping, but now the Premier's Delivery Unit has told us that they are looking at achieving progress rather than fixing it. You know things are bad when the President of the AMA even says that there are surely few times in history when it has been 'so worrisome to be a person who may need care in South Australia's public hospitals'.

This health minister has broken records very badly when it comes to ramping in this state. Not only is the Labor government not fixing ramping like they promised, but they are making it worse with their GP payroll tax grab. We know that we should be making it easier for people to see their GP, not harder. We know that this GP payroll tax is only going to make life harder for South Australians. It is only going to make it harder for people to see their GP. So we are going to see more line-ups and more ramping as well. It is going to drive up the cost of primary care in what is the middle of a cost-of-living crisis.

The questions are: where are the corflutes now, where is the chalk now? You see, at the time of the 2022 state election, the challenges that exist today also existed then. Bed block existed then. Aged care pressures existed then. NDIS pressures existed then. Were all factors back then as they are now? In addition to that, you also had a global pandemic back then. Despite that now, ramping is amongst the worst that it has ever been under this Labor government.

We were honest about the challenges, but this Premier and this Labor government have not been. They told South Australians that they would fix it, but ramping has never been worse in our history.