Hospital Beds

The Hon. C.M. SCRIVEN (14:24): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Minister for Health and Wellbeing regarding hospital beds.

Leave granted.

The Hon. C.M. SCRIVEN: On 28 October 2019, the chief executive of the health department, Dr McGowan, was asked, 'Who has the ultimate decision-making capacity to have hospital beds reopened?' Mr McGowan responded, 'The minister, ultimately.' 'And the governance of the system?' 'The minister has ultimate directive powers in the health system.' The chief executive went on to say, 'The minister is the person elected by the people to lead our health system, and he has directive powers of the board and he can exercise that whenever he chooses.' My questions to the minister are:

1. Is the minister aware that he has these powers?

2. Given that ramping is at record levels, why hasn't the minister used those powers to direct that closed beds should be reopened?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:25): I will leave it to the President to reflect on whether quoting from a select committee hearing earlier this week is within standing orders.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. S.G. WADE: I am sorry, that interjection has to be responded to. If you are going to say 'quotation marks', it has to be a quote.

The Hon. K.J. MAHER: Point of order: the minister is making assertions that are just plain false. The Hon. Ms Scriven in no part of that question mentioned any particular committee.

The PRESIDENT: Leader of the Opposition: one, I allowed the question, so by implication I did not decide to rule it out of order. Secondly, I would appreciate if you did not try to act like the President from the Leader of the Opposition's benches. I appreciate that we all aspire to this chair, but I am more than capable of handling it by myself. Minister, do you wish to respond to that question?

The Hon. S.G. WADE: I do. To clarify, Mr President, I was not raising a point of order, I was just making an observation.

The PRESIDENT: I was aware of that. That's why I didn't rule the question out of order.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Don't push your luck.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: It is important for the Labor Party, which has consistently opposed board governance, that board governance operates in every other state in Australia and it still operates under the Westminster system. So I completely agree with my chief executive that I am responsible for the health system. Whether that means that I want to issue a directive every day—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! Please, I would like to listen to the answer—restrain yourselves.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: As the minister responsible under the Westminster system, I am not going to issue a direction every day to tell the Flinders and Upper North hospitals what meals they are going to put on that day. I am not going to direct the Northern Adelaide Local Health Network whether or not to discharge patients. I am not going to tell the Barossa Hills and Fleurieu how they should manage their staff training to make sure they have aged care.

What I am going to do is put in place a governance structure, both departmental and local health networks, that makes sure that our health system is better connected to communities and better connected to clinicians, because I am convinced that the Labor Party experiment of centralisation over 10 years completely failed. They showed that you can't run a health system of 40,000 employees from Hindmarsh Square and expect the system to improve.

What we saw out of the Labor Party fixation on the city centre complex was Transforming Health—completely disconnected from clinicians, completely disconnected from communities. We saw the people of South Australia vote on that last March and they had a very clear and strong message to the Labor Party that: we are sick of your centralised health approach; we are putting in the Liberals. What the Liberals have put in is a strong board governance structure. I will back my boards. Of course I will direct them if I feel the need to, but I am not going to start running the health system from the back seat.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. C.M. SCRIVEN: Mr President—

The PRESIDENT: Hold on, I am waiting for your own benches to quieten down. Supplementary.