Royal Adelaide Hospital

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (14:28): Supplementary arising from the answer: given that the minister—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! I can't hear the member.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: —is the sole determinant now of what is in the public interest in relation to these very important matters at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, and given that the minister believes that alerts about pizzas are sufficient to be made public, why then does he think that alerts about serious increases in surgical infections are not fit to be made public?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:29): I made it clear that I did not make the decision as to the form of public announcement.

The Hon. K.J. Maher: You did! You sat on it.

The PRESIDENT: Order! Stop showing disrespect to your own whip.

The Hon. K.J. Maher: You get the information.

The PRESIDENT: Leader of the Opposition, don't talk over me. Allow the minister to respond to your own whip's question.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: Going back to the honourable member's pizza, the point—

The Hon. K.J. Maher: You were flippant and compared it to pizza.

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. S.G. WADE: The point is not whether or not the harm from an infection in relation to hip or knee replacement is greater than consuming a contaminated pizza, because the variables are diverse. The point I was making was about the need to know. There is no risk of somebody walking into the Royal Adelaide Hospital and having elective orthopaedic surgery without the clinicians knowing it.

The clinicians have decided that they will not do elective surgery for hip and knee replacements at the Royal Adelaide Hospital for the next period while they investigate a trend in infections. That is a very clear and, I believe, sound strategy to limit the risk in relation to orthopaedics. I am sure that, as the investigation proceeds, they will make decisions as to whether they are comfortable in resuming elective knee and hip replacements at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, and I assure you that will be a decision that clinicians will make.