House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-05-07 Daily Xml

Contents

ROYAL ADELAIDE HOSPITAL

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:40): Will the Minister for Health advise what action he proposes to take about the Royal Adelaide Hospital's failure to pass the WorkCover health audit as a safe place of work? Target 2.11 of the State Strategic Plan for greater safety at work provides a target to achieve the nationally agreed target of a 40 per cent reduction by 2012. The key measure shows an increase in injury since September 2005. Public hospitals are now subject to a WorkCover health audit, and the opposition is informed that, to date, 70 per cent of those that have been tested, including the Royal Adelaide Hospital, have failed.

The Hon. J.D. HILL (Kaurna—Minister for Health, Minister for the Southern Suburbs, Minister Assisting the Premier in the Arts) (14:41): It is true that the hospitals in our state are now covered by WorkCover. It is true that a proportion of those hospitals (and it is greater than 50 per cent, so the honourable member might be right that it is 70 per cent) have not yet satisfied all the requirements. I want to assure the house that we are working to make sure that those requirements are satisfied.

I point out two things that we are trying to do, which, in the future, will make it easier for the health system to deal with WorkCover. Of course, the opposition opposed both those things. The first thing is the Health Care Act, which gives responsibility for all the things that happen in our hospitals to the CE and me, as minister. That is not the case currently, it has not been the case in the past, but in the future it will be. That responsibility will be ours rather than that of individual boards.

The second thing, of course, is that we want completely to recreate the central Adelaide hospital and build the Marjorie Jackson-Nelson Hospital, and, by building such a hospital, we will be able to create a very safe workplace for all the people who currently work in that hospital.