SA Health

The Hon. J.E. HANSON (15:09): Further supplementary: why has the minister budgeted for an increase of 4.5 extra communications specialists worth $570,000 in his own budget?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (15:09): I refer the honourable member to my previous answer. Let me try to save him the embarrassment by going back to his original question and addressing the issue about $2 million.

First of all, as I said, the honourable Treasurer and the honourable Attorney-General make decisions about ICAC funding, but the government's fundamental position in relation to the ICAC is not whether or not in a multibillion dollar budget we can find $2 million. That is not the point. We can't afford the ICAC proposed inquiry not because of the money but because of the delay and, in particular, undermining the drive for reform that is already underway.

We have KordaMentha. We engaged KordaMentha a matter of months after we were elected to government and that was significant in the context of the concerns that the ICAC commissioner had raised with myself and the Premier very early on in the government. We didn't say, 'This is all too hard. We can't afford to deploy resources to deal with mismanagement.' No; with the support of the Treasurer and the rest of the cabinet, we found $20 million to start tackling the problem.

What the ICAC is proposing is that we should put the pause on all that and have a long inquiry, which I believe would distract and delay the important delivery reform. This government has chosen to get on with the job. We did independent reviews as soon as we were elected. Not only was there the KordaMentha work, but we also brought in independent people in terms of the EPAS disaster, another disaster under the former Labor government. We accepted the recommendations of the report, scrapped the EPAS disaster and we are rolling out a much more successful Sunrise electronic medical record system.

I think one of the most important elements of independence that we have injected into Health is actually the independence that you get through boards. Here we have people brought in from outside Health; people with commercial experience, legal experience and the like, who can act independently from the bureaucracy. We are committed—

The Hon. J.E. HANSON: Point of order, Mr President: I think we have drifted a fair way from the original supplementary, let alone the original question. We are now talking about boards. If he could wrap it up—

The PRESIDENT: Do you wish to go on, minister?

The Hon. S.G. WADE: Thank you, Mr President, I might well.

The PRESIDENT: Be mindful of relevance, please.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: I will take your hint, Mr President, and I will wind up. Let me just summarise it for the Labor Party people who are having trouble keeping track. We were elected after 16 years of your mismanagement. Within the first 18 months, we dramatically decentralised board governance and we rejected your centralisation of health care. I notice that your party, even in this parliament, continues to oppose that.

We also brought in an independent review to fix up your disaster in relation to EPAS and we also brought in an independent review through the KordaMentha process. We are committed to driving reform. We do not believe that it would be helpful to have a royal commission or an ICAC evaluation that would both delay and disrupt important reform processes that are underway.