Question Time

Modbury Hospital Cardiology Services

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Leader of the Opposition) (14:28): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Health a question in relation to the cardiac outpatient services at Modbury Hospital.

Leave granted.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: In a news release dated 7 October 2015 his predecessor, the member for Playford, stated that, and I quote, 'all current specialty outpatient services accessed at Modbury Hospital will remain'. My questions are:

1. Was the chest pain quick access clinic available at Modbury in October 2015?

2. Is the chest pain quick access clinic available at Modbury now?

The Hon. P. MALINAUSKAS (Minister for Health, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse) (14:29): Let me thank the honourable member for his question regarding Modbury. The honourable member would be aware, just as the chamber would be aware, that the government is currently undertaking a somewhat extensive exercise to assess the services we provide at the Modbury Hospital. Early on into my taking on this responsibility, the Premier asked that I lead a review to see what improvements can be made to the Modbury Hospital regarding services we provide to the men and women who live within the north-eastern suburbs.

I think it is fair to say that this government is one that is highly committed to ensuring that all South Australians get access to high-quality healthcare services in modern, state-of-the-art facilities. We certainly have been a government that has no aversion to making the tough decisions that are required in order to be able to achieve a high-quality healthcare service for all South Australians, not just now but for many, many years to come. The Modbury review is progressing well. I am pleased to report to the chamber that I have had the opportunity to meet extensively with both community members from the area in a number of different forums and passionate residents of the north-eastern suburbs who care deeply about the Modbury Hospital and the work that is undertaken there.

It is also true that I have met with a large number of clinicians—nurses and doctors and some allied health professionals—regarding the Modbury Hospital. Again, many men and women who work at Modbury, and have for some time, enjoy the benefit of experience, in a clinical sense, to be able to provide views and advice to the government about what best to do in terms of the Modbury Hospital's ongoing role into the future, in terms of provision of healthcare services.

I think it's fair to say—there's no secret or surprise about this—that clinicians don't always agree with each other. It's true that often doctors disagree about how best to provide a particular service to members of the community. That's not unusual in a field that is of a scientific nature and, I think, in many respects it reflects the genuine passion that our clinicians have for these sorts of health services.

But one thing that is difficult is having a review take place that has at its heart the objective of delivering an improved service at Modbury Hospital and having it interrupted with outrageous pieces of misinformation coming from politicians who would seek to exploit fear in the community to achieve a political objective, rather than actually trying to improve the outcomes for residents within the area. Unfortunately, that's exactly what has occurred in the case of the Liberal Party's shrill effort to try to create more anxiety and fear in the community. We know the Liberal Party has form in this area.

Throughout the Transforming Health exercise, which has been a significant undertaking by the government to make sure that we can deliver sustainable and high-quality health services throughout our community for many decades to come, the opposition has sought to exploit, at every opportunity, fear within the community regarding it. It is interesting that when you actually start to analyse the policy the Liberal Party are collating in the lead-up to the next election regarding what they would do with health, it largely reflects, or is a mirror image of, what the government's policy is.

Take today, for instance, where the Liberal Party announced that it is going to retain the pool at the Repat. That's the government's stated position. They haven't taken any opportunity to announce any other extraordinary application of the Repat site for residents of the southern suburbs. What they have done is copied exactly what the state government's position is. What have they done in respect of The QEH? They came out a couple of weekends ago and decided to announce a policy, and guess what? It's exactly the same as the government's policy, except, of course, there is no further commitment to the very substantial investment of a quarter of a billion dollars that this government is going to be making into The QEH over many years to come.

It's unfortunate that they have repeated this effort recently with the Modbury Hospital, trying to create fear in the community that there is some sort of imminent change happening to cardiac services at Modbury Hospital. My advice is that that is not occurring. The Liberal Party, instead, is trying to spread misinformation with the objective of creating fear in the community for their own political ends. It's shameful, and the residents of the north-eastern suburbs will call them out for it.