Ambulance Ramping

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA (Hartley—Leader of the Opposition) (14:19): My question is to the Premier. Will the Premier apologise to South Australians for doubling the ramping crisis that he promised to fix?

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (14:19): I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. As the Leader of the Opposition, hopefully, is well aware, and as I am sure many South Australians are, the state government is rolling out countless different policy efforts and endeavours to seek to increase the capacity of our hospital system.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Unley knows that that's unparliamentary and he is on a final warning. And the member for Hammond, you are on a warning as well.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: I note the interjections from the opposition, but it's interesting that what we don't hear from the opposition, apart from any policy of their own in this area, is a critique of any of the policies that the state government is instituting. Are they opposed to a record investment in more nurses? Are they opposed to us employing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of more doctors? Are they opposed to the rollout of all the extra ambulance officers that we have delivered? Are they opposed to the hundreds of beds that we are opening and the more beds that we are opening?

If you take past behaviour as an indicator then, of course, they are opposed to those things because they were cutting all those things during the course of the pandemic. They were cutting nurses and they weren't opening beds in the way that we are. On this side of the house we are clear-eyed focused to make sure that we are increasing the size and the capacity of our hospital system both in metropolitan Adelaide and in regional South Australia.

Now in respect of ramping, it is true that there are a number of challenges that we did not anticipate, not least of which the fact that we now have over 280 people—I think 287 at last count—in our public hospital system who are, in effect, ready to be discharged but waiting to get an aged-care bed. When we came to government that number was less—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Unley can leave the chamber for 15 minutes.

The honourable member for Unley having withdrawn from the chamber:

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: When we came to government that number was less than 50. What we know is if not for this government's massive increase in capacity, including the opening up of all those hundreds of beds, and had the people of South Australia been getting a basketball stadium instead, could you imagine how much worse the problem would be?

That is why we are going to keep investing our effort, we are going to keep investing our energy in working with our clinicians and our public health experts to keep rolling out that additional capacity, which we know is only good. It is certainly welcomed by the people who work in the public health system and we will keep that going.

In the meantime, in respect of ambulances, we continue to roll out additional ambulances, which is making a difference to ambulance response times. In relation to the ambulance response times—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: The Leader of the Opposition comes out with another infamous quip. We would simply make the point that ambulance response times have dramatically improved as a result of the initiatives this government have delivered, which means more people are alive as a result in comparison with the slow ambulance response times we saw under those opposite.