COVID-19 Vaccination Rollout

The Hon. R.A. SIMMS (14:40): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before addressing a question without notice to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing on the topic of the COVID-19 vaccination rollout for those experiencing homelessness.

Leave granted.

The Hon. R.A. SIMMS: In this chamber on Tuesday, I asked the Minister for Health and Wellbeing what plans were being put in place to deal with vaccinations for people who are experiencing homelessness here in South Australia. We know that there are about 6,000 South Australians who are currently experiencing homelessness. In his reply, the minister indicated that the department was going to be liaising with food vans to get the vaccine out to people who are homeless. So my question to the minister is: which food vans will be operating this service? Have any of the organisations that will be operating the service been impacted by the government's cuts to homelessness service providers? Will the organisations responsible for rolling out the vaccine be given additional resources?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:42): I thank the honourable member for his question; it gives me the opportunity to educate him in terms of how the health portfolio works. The question that was asked on Tuesday and the comments that the honourable member has made publicly suggest that there is going to be one big monolith called SA Health that's going to direct how every dose of the COVID vaccine is going to be delivered. Well, the Greens might be a centralised big government party, but our party believes—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. S.G. WADE: I will look forward to Tammy Franks telling me about the four pillars again, but let me just get back to my answer, though. The Liberal Party fundamentally believes in working with local expertise to deliver local solutions to local problems, and that's why we massively increased the number of local health networks from five to 10, so that local people can be making local decisions about local services. As I was saying on Tuesday to the honourable member, CALHN and SALHN, in particular, have very strong relationships with homelessness service providers. Why would you have a city centre based health bureaucracy telling CALHN and SALHN how to deal with their clients better than they know?

The Hon. E.S. Bourke: It's working really well.

The PRESIDENT: The Hon. Ms Bourke!

The Hon. S.G. WADE: The honourable member's question today also misconstrues what I said on Tuesday. What I was indicating is that I had had a conversation earlier that day with the senior management of the Southern Adelaide Local Health Network, and, as I understand it, they were intending to link their homelessness outreach to food services. That is not to say that it would be administered in a food van, as some might misconstrue.

SA Health and its networks continue to deal with local partners in terms of delivering local services. In particular, SA Health is working closely with the homelessness sector alliance in terms of the COVID-19 response to all homeless people. Vaccination teams may be placed at sites where food vans are located, but, as I indicated, the delivery of the vaccinations will be in line with the highest clinical standards. The partnership of homelessness alliances is critical to supporting people who are homeless to access vaccinations.

The PRESIDENT: The Hon. Mr Simms has a supplementary question.