Psychiatry Workforce Plan SA

Ms PRATT (Frome) (15:22): The minister expressed delight at the commissioning of this report, which is dated October 2023. It was handed down or completed last year in September. My question to the minister is then why did it take seven months for it to be released publicly?

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (15:23): Because we have been working on it. This is a report that we commissioned; it was, in fact, one of our election commitments. It was something that we were very delighted to work on, and we have been working hand in glove with the college. One of the things that we have been working on over the past few months is the recruitment campaign, which has now gone live, and we coincided that with the release of the report. That has been now taking place nationally and internationally, coinciding with those positions opening up for those soon-to-be-opened mental health centres across the state.

So these things are all coming together, and there's no doubt that there are challenges in terms of the current availability of psychiatrists. It takes time to train psychiatrists, but if we don't start that work now, then we will be in a worse position into the future where we have got the potential to be in a better position in the future with this report, with this implementation of this plan that we have developed. That's why we thought ahead. We said from the get-go that we would be a government that didn't just think about the next four years but the next generation, thinking through about the future, and that's why we have done this plan. That's why we are implementing it, and that's why we will take the action necessary to make sure that we have got a stronger pipeline of psychiatrists in this state into the future.