SA Pathology

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (15:32): I rise to put on the public record the Australian Conservatives' concern regarding what this state government is doing to the whole of the health system in South Australia, but specifically SA Pathology services. One way or another, whichever way it has been branded over many decades, it has done outstanding work for South Australians. We hear now that over 200 jobs will potentially be axed by the government.

I happen to know people who work in pathology services, and they are very hardworking and very dedicated. They are not sitting on their backsides, twiddling their thumbs. In fact, a lot of the time, they are under pressure to do tests and write reports on what they observe from these tests for doctors waiting to get on with urgent treatment for patients. This is especially the case in country South Australia. I understand that there is no ruling out of the axing of jobs in SA Pathology in the country, in addition to the axing of jobs in the city and metropolitan area.

Whether they are dealing with a mother about to give birth to a baby, someone who comes in with a suspected heart attack or stroke, or someone who has actually had an injury, the fact is that doctors rely on these pathology tests and services. They rely on the professionalism and the accuracy of analysis of the pathologists who do this work. It seems to me that, one way or another, this state government is hell-bent on getting rid of SA Pathology and replacing it with outsourcing or privatisation. This government made a commitment in 2002 that they would never do that, but we have seen that pledge broken time and time again.

Particularly worrying for country people would be the fact that some tests are not viable for the private sector. If it is a rare test, it can at the moment be done, I am told, in the city, and often in the country, by SA Pathology services. If in fact they downsize, outsource or privatise SA Pathology services, it may be that some of those tests might need to be done interstate, which could delay the results and therefore the treatment of a patient for 24 hours, which is obviously a very long time when it is an emergency situation.

The other thing that worries me is the brain drain from country and regional South Australia. If you do away with pathology staff in a lot of the regional centres and outsource them, then you are actually doing away with the intellectual jobs that are there. You are doing away with additional families that come into the area that support all the services, the schools, churches and sporting clubs that are always short on the ground when it comes to numbers anyway. You only have to travel around rural South Australia to see, over the last nearly 20 years, the decline in population as it stands.

I believe governments have a responsibility and a duty to govern for both the country and the city. We all know that the Weatherill government is a very city-centric government. In fact, it does not matter where I go in my 50,000 and 60,000 kilometres of travels a year across South Australia, people are telling me that this government does not know much above O'Halloran Hill and a little north of Gepps Cross. Rural people are sick and tired of that.

Another example of this is what we saw only a few weeks ago. I went with opposition colleagues to Yorketown to look at what is going on down there, because the government is talking about withdrawing surgical services and sending them up to Wallaroo. Six hundred people—and good on those people—attended the Yorketown Town Hall that night to express their concern. Unfortunately, the minister and the most senior bureaucrats in Health were not there, but they did send a brave Country Health SA representative from the northern area, who I hope will take a message back to the government that country people have had enough, they do not want their pathology services reduced and they do not want their hospital services reduced either. What they want is a fair go and a fair return for their part of the state.