Hospital Accreditation

The Hon. R.P. WORTLEY (14:31): I want to ask a question of the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Given that the minister raised the importance of transparency on draft hospital accreditation reports, how quickly will you be publicly releasing all draft reports upon receipt?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:32): The Central Adelaide Local Health Network underwent a National Safety and Quality Health Care Services Standards survey in February 2018, conducted under the auspices of the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards. The survey found that the new Royal Adelaide Hospital failed to meet several core standards, including medication safety benchmarks.

I think it is very important that members understand that this was not about the physical fabric. We all know that there are problems at the Royal Adelaide Hospital with the size of the resuscitation rooms and we know that there are problems with the operation of the mental health wards, but these core standards and the accreditation process particularly related to process issues like discharge planning and medication safety benchmarks.

In the lead-up to the federal election, it became an open secret throughout the Adelaide community that there had been an accreditation failure in the Central Adelaide Local Health Network and the federal minister asked for a copy of that report. I think it took two days for the former minister to even get it into his hands, but he didn't choose to release it. We committed that if we were elected, we would table that report.

The fact of the matter is that, leading up to the March 2018 election, one of the most hotly debated issues was the former Labor government's handling of health. Nothing is more emblematic of the failure of the Labor Party than the way they have delivered the Royal Adelaide Hospital. Here we are, more than six months in, and it is still not functioning fully. We've still got 10 of the mental health beds closed—

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: Point of order, Mr President.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: Excuse me, I'm answering.

The PRESIDENT: Point of order. The Hon. Mr Hunter.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: I have also been waiting for several minutes, giving the minister some leniency in answering the question, but he hasn't. He was waffling on. He was asked how quickly will he, the minister, publicly release draft reports upon their receipt into his hands. He hasn't even approached that time line yet.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: The President has quite rightly said that he is not going to insist on opposition demands for yes/no answers; likewise, I would trust that the President will not force the government to respond to some sort of multiple choice test. I thank the honourable Leader of the Opposition for his suggestions on responses that I might give, but it's my response that I'm giving, and my response is that the—

The Hon. K.J. Maher: So, what is it? What's your response then, Stephen? What is it?

The Hon. S.G. WADE: My response—thanks; you're on the edge of your seat there, stay there. The fact of the matter is that—

The Hon. J.S.L. Dawkins: There's relevance deprivation over there.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: Indeed.

The PRESIDENT: Order! Let the minister respond to the point of order.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: Thank you, Mr President, for your protection. In the context of the lack of transparency of the former Labor government in the lead-up to the last election, we said that we would release the report they tabled because it should have been released in the context of the election. The fact of the matter is that the community was entitled to know whether the government was telling the truth when they were saying that everything was fine with the Royal Adelaide Hospital. What we now know is that it wasn't.