Hospital Staff Numbers

The Hon. I. PNEVMATIKOS (15:16): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Health and Wellbeing a question regarding hospitals.

Leave granted.

The Hon. I. PNEVMATIKOS: Health chief executive Dr McGowan was publicly recorded as saying that he was 'disinclined' to meet with clinicians to discuss concerns about understaffing. He also stated that the hospital was likely 'overstaffed'. My questions to the minister are:

1. Does the minister expect his chief executive to meet with hospital clinicians, and without hospital management attending, if that is what clinicians want?

2. Does the minister agree with his chief executive that the hospital is currently 'overstaffed'?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (15:17): I will answer the second question first. That exact question was asked in the last sitting period, and I refer the honourable member to my response to that question when it was asked then. The Labor Party's bullying of Mr McGowan—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. S.G. WADE: —reflects their fundamental either lack of understanding or lack of acceptance of the democratic mandate of this government, which was supported by the parliament of this state—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! I would like to hear the answer.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: —in delivering fundamental reform of the governance of Health. Under the former Labor government we had a government that, in the middle of the 2000s, decided to centralise health care—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: The Hon. Ms Bourke!

The Hon. S.G. WADE: —in Hindmarsh Square. They thought you could have a health system in a state as geographically diverse as South Australia, with a staff of over 40,000, being properly and effectively managed by bureaucrats in the city centre. That is not the view of this government, and that is why we had fundamental reform of governance towards local health networks.

In 2019, the Marshall Liberal government introduced that broad-based governance in fulfilment of our election commitment. Each of the 10 local health networks had boards and management to run them. The role of the chief executive of the department, in a devolved structure, is to allocate funding across the system. It is up to the boards to prioritise services and allocate resources in light of what the clinicians and the community are saying they need.

It would be a complete undermining of the fundamental reform that the people of South Australia voted for, that this government was committed to delivering, for that chief executive to go and micromanage what the boards are doing. Centralised management did not work.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. S.G. WADE: No other state or territory maintains that approach and we are going to continue to deliver decentralised management.