Women's and Children's Hospital

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE (14:56): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Minister for Health and Wellbeing regarding hospitals.

Leave granted.

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE: In August, a group of clinicians, staff and community members formed the Women's and Children's Hospital Alliance. This group seeks to voice, and I quote, 'enormous concerns about chronic and escalating understaffing and under-resourcing of the existing hospital, which threatens patient care and staff morale'. My questions to the minister are:

1. Does the minister recognise the need for additional resources over and above the existing sustainment works funding allocated to the current Women's and Children's Hospital site?

2. What did the minister promise to clinicians when he met them last Wednesday to discuss cardiac surgery at the Women's and Children's Hospital?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:57): I would like to thank the member for a touch of honesty. She acknowledged that the under-resourcing of the Women's and Children's Hospital that the alliance refers to is chronic. In other words, the former Labor government gave us a hospital network that was debilitated—completely debilitated—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order on my left!

The Hon. S.G. WADE: —particularly because of the disaster of the Transforming Health experiment.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! Minister, sit down, please. I am trying to hear the minister and I can't hear the minister, so I suspect that Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition can't hear the minister. The minister has the call and will be heard in silence.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: So what this government has done is, since the last Labor budget, it has invested—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Do you want to hear the minister's response or not? The minister has the call.

An honourable member: Arrogant.

The PRESIDENT: No, that doesn't help either. I don't want interjections on either side.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: The Leader of the Opposition knows better than that. The minister has the call.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: The point I was making was, since the last Labor budget, the Marshall Liberal government has invested tens of millions of dollars in the Women's and Children's Hospital, and my expectation is that funding will continue to increase. But let me make it clear to the union and to the community people who are working with the union: their claim of a $100 million increase in the WCHN budget is clearly an ambit claim—

The Hon. I.K. Hunter: You're running the show down, Stephen. You're running it down.

The PRESIDENT: The Hon. Mr Hunter will be silent.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: —it is unsubstantiated and it is unrealistic. The government has indicated that, as we have done in the past, we will continue to invest in quality women's and children's services, but ambit claims by unions do not help the public discussion. I accept that every clinician and every hospital would like increased resources for their services and their patients, but clinicians need to work with the management and with the board to effectively use the funding available to them to strengthen and grow their services.

The PRESIDENT: The Hon. Ms Bourke, a supplementary.