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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-10-14 Daily Xml
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Question Time

ELECTIVE SURGERY

Mrs REDMOND (Heysen—Leader of the Opposition) (14:06): My question is to the Minister for Health. Following today's AMA report on the public health system, does the minister now acknowledge that he has not only lost control of the health budget but also mismanaged the health system, allowing South Australian elective surgery waiting lists to be—

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: I think you would understand my point of order, Mr Speaker.

The SPEAKER: The question is entirely debate. However, now that it is on record it would be unfair of me not to provide the minister with an opportunity to respond. The Minister for Health.

The Hon. J.D. HILL (Kaurna—Minister for Health, Minister for the Southern Suburbs, Minister Assisting the Premier in the Arts) (14:07): I am like one of those aquifers in the South-East—totally unconfined. Mr Speaker, I appreciate both the opportunity to answer this question and the amount of latitude that I think is implicit in your commentary to the Leader of the Opposition, but I will not abuse it, sir, unlike her.

I am very pleased to get this question, and I am surprised that the opposition has asked it, because I think generally the opposition has seemed terribly disinterested in health issues.

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson: Uninterested.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: Okay; uninterested.

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson: They're not disinterested in the least.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: Uninterested, then. The public hospital report card released today by the AMA is based on information which is now 15 months old; it is based on data for the financial—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: I will answer this in a great deal of detail and I will insist that those opposite listen, because they make claims which are based on falsehoods, and it is important for them to get the facts. It is regrettable, I have to say, that the AMA, with whom I have a great relationship, chose not to discuss their report with us, because we could have helped them with the facts that are in that report.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: The point is that this report is based on data from 2007-08; in fact, it is based on data which was obtained during the last year of the Howard government. Of course, that was a year when the health system in South Australia was underfunded by the Howard government. Since then, we have had a change of government and we have had additional flows of funding, and I will go through it bit by bit, chapter by chapter.

The Howard government failed to keep up with the growing demand for hospital services, allowing the commonwealth share of South Australian hospital funding to fall from 43.7 per cent when they came to office in 1996-97 to just 36.7 per cent in 2007-08—so, a huge reduction in commonwealth funding. Since the election of the Rudd government, better collaboration with and investment from the commonwealth has resulted in dramatic cuts to South Australia's elective surgery waiting lists and shorter waiting times in our public emergency departments. That is not just a claim; I will prove that claim with facts.

This is reflected in the additional $13.6 million investment from the commonwealth to complete an additional 2,262 elective surgery procedures in South Australian hospitals in the 2008 calendar year. That has taken our number of elective surgical procedures in South Australia in that year to 44,000—the greatest number in the history of our state. As well, we have had an investment of $8.1 million to improve elective surgery infrastructure in South Australian hospitals.

I do not know why the former deputy leader of the opposition, the member for Bragg, keeps interjecting—she should realise she has been dumped from the health portfolio. I know she does not have much regard for the new shadow minister, but really she should leave the interjection pathway to him. Unfortunately, he does seem to be following the same pathway as the former spokesperson.

The commonwealth funding is in addition to the Rann government's investment of an extra $55 million to increase the number of elective surgical procedures over the four years from 2006-07 to 2009-10. The AMA's old 2007-08 data says that 73 per cent—

Dr McFetridge: You said 90 per cent occupancy in February, John.

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Morphett will come to order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: The AMA's 2007-08 data says that 73 per cent of category 2 elective surgery patients—this is what it says about South Australia—were seen within clinically acceptable time frames. Following the collaboration with the commonwealth, I am pleased to say that this has risen to 84 per cent, and overdue waiting lists were slashed by 98.5 per cent in 2008-09.

Those figures for 2008-09 are available, yet the AMA in its report chose to use old figures, and based on those old figures it has come to conclusions that are wrong—absolutely wrong. If the AMA had spoken to us, we could have given it the most recent information. It is selective choice of statistics to mount an argument which is wrong.

The median wait for elective surgery has been cut from 42 days in 2007-08, which was reported by the AMA, to 36 days in 2008-09, which was not reported by the AMA. Performance in emergency departments has also improved from the old data relied upon by the AMA. In emergency departments, the number of urgent category 3 patients seen on time has risen from 54 per cent in 2007-08, as reported by the AMA, to 59 per cent in 2008-09, not reported by the AMA.

In 2007-08, 61 per cent of all emergency department patients were seen on time, as reported by the AMA, and that has risen to 65 per cent in 2008-09, not reported by the AMA. In emergency departments, further improvements will occur as a result of the commonwealth's additional investment of $61.7 million over five years, which will be invested in programs designed to reduce congestion in the emergency department, such as $23.7 million for new acute medical units and $18.3 million for more nurse practitioners and nurse liaison.

The job of cutting waiting times in EDs and waiting lists for elective surgery is not finished, and what is clear from the data is the toxic legacy that the Liberal governments leave in our public hospital system through years and years of neglect and persistent refusal to invest in building new infrastructure and funding more procedures.

We have a wonderful health-care system in Australia and we have a wonderful health-care system in South Australia. This is something that every single Australian knows and should be proud of. The facts are that our citizens live longer than just about anybody else on the planet, on average. I think only some people in Japan live longer than Australians, and we live longer, with good health. Unfortunately, our system is under pressure because of the ageing of our population.

The Hon. K.O. Foley interjecting:

The Hon. J.D. HILL: And technology, as the Deputy Premier says. Attempting to score political points on the basis of information which is old is not only misleading but dangerous, because it tells the public that they cannot trust their health system. I am here to say that the public of this state can trust their health system. We have excellent doctors and nurses and other care workers who provide fantastic services in our hospitals.

The Hon. J.W. Weatherill interjecting:

The Hon. J.D. HILL: I won't comment on that. As a state we have continued to put more and more funding. When we came to office, the annual expenditure on public health and hospitals in this state was about $2 billion. In the seven or eight years that we have been in office, we have doubled that: it is now $4.1 billion. We have increased the number of doctors in our employment by over a thousand.

Dr McFetridge interjecting:

The Hon. J.D. HILL: I'll get to that interjection, Mr Speaker. We have increased the number of nurses by over 3,300. We have increased the number of allied health workers by over 900, and we are in the process of reducing the number of non-service providing public servants who work in our system. We are targeting hundreds of jobs that are in financial management and in human resources—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: Every single time I attempt to do this the opposition objects and takes political points and goes out to the media and says, 'Isn't it a terrible thing that the government is cutting these jobs in health?' They do it in the country and they do it in the city. They are full of claptrap. They are hypocritical and full of claptrap. They have no policy for health except to object to every single reform measure that this government attempts to put into place to make sure that we have a sustainable system for the future. Please ask another question.

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