SA Pathology

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE (14:36): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Will the government be closing any SA Pathology laboratories or collection centres? Will the government guarantee there will be no delay for test results from implementing their cuts to SA Pathology?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:36): I can assure honourable members that SA Pathology does not use lavatories to collect specimens. Also, what I can assure honourable members is that there are actually fewer net suggested patient collection centres closed under the PwC report than there was under Ernst and Young.

There is a bit of a pattern developing here. Labor wants an FTE reduction of 330 and then gets shocked when our report suggests 200. They want to do scaremongering about closure of patient collection centres when in fact the report that has been presented to us suggests fewer patient collection centres to be closed. The report also talks about rationalising—in other words, opening centres, closing centres—and a net reduction, under the PwC report, of five. But the details of each of these strategies will be worked through with SA Pathology, with the Department for Health and Wellbeing and with the Department of Treasury and Finance, because one thing this government is determined to do is to not leave people in limbo for three years, having a 334 person FTE cut hanging over people until late 2017 when, so close to the election, the Labor Party thought, 'Well, we need to be kind to staff. We will no longer have the sword of Damocles hanging over them. We will move the sword to the other side of the election.'

They didn't say they stopped believing in pathology efficiencies. What they said is, 'We just want to get through this election. We just want to avoid further scrutiny. We will leave our plan till after the election.' What happens after the election? Having gone through almost a full parliamentary term with a cuts program with a target of 334, we now have a pathetic opposition that wants to rail in opposition against the very thing they were delivering in government.

You can look at the Ernst and Young report, you can look at the PricewaterhouseCoopers report and you can see this sounds a bit familiar. A lot of the recommendations of PwC are Labor's failed savings strategies. They might rail and preach against what they said in government, but all they are showing is that Labor cannot be trusted on health. In opposition, they will preach like puritans; when they are in government they will act like prostitutes.