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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-09-25 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

Ambulance Ramping

Mr BOYER (Wright) (15:11): Last week, Channel 9 aired an exclusive interview with the Minister for Health about the overcrowding and ramping crisis that is facing our state. We have heard the facts before: ambulance ramping and overcrowding in our hospitals is now so bad that it is beginning to cost lives.

Last week, it was revealed by the Ambulance Employees Association that a 93-year-old woman died whilst ramped in the back of an ambulance for more than an hour outside the Flinders Medical Centre. There was also the tragic death of 34-year-old Jason Mountstephen, who died while waiting more than 20 minutes for paramedics to arrive. His parents, too, blame ramping for his death.

I can tell you that it does not get much worse than this for a minister for health. Belatedly and reluctantly, after being asked by Channel 9 to front the cameras four times in eight days and refusing, Mr Wade finally agreed to give an interview. If the families of Mr Mountstephen and the 93-year-old lady thought they would get some solace from the comment from Mr Wade, they would have been bitterly disappointed by what they heard.

I have said it before: the hallmark of this Marshall Liberal government is a fundamental lack of compassion. Time and time again, we have been dumbstruck on this side of the house by the decisions that are made by this government. There appears to be no discernible vision linking the decisions that are coming out of cabinet and nothing but a consistent disregard for those who will be disadvantaged by those decisions.

The comment given to Channel 9 by the minister in this story, I think, is the best example yet of that callousness. When asked about the death of Mr Mountstephen and whether he took responsibility for it, Mr Wade said, 'I apologise to the family that the health system wasn't able to meet their expectations in delivering care in that very stressful time.' Surely this is a new low in bureaucratese. It sounds to me like whoever writes the recorded messages for the big banks is now writing media lines for minister Wade. Where is the empathy? Where is the sense of emotion that you would expect from another human being when confronted with a story about a young person losing their life?

I know the minister's words offered no answers to the grieving families about why their loved ones are no longer with them, but they do, I think, explain how this government can simultaneously cut more than 1,000 jobs from SA Health, put corporate liquidators in charge of the Central Adelaide Local Health Network, make the Mental Health Commissioner a part-time job and still believe that things in the South Australian health system are actually going to improve.

It is collateral damage; it is a collateral damage mindset. When you are on your second pint of Kool-Aid and you are convinced that tragedies like the deaths of Jason Mountstephen and the 93-year-old lady are just the unavoidable cost of doing business, then of course you give the kind of cold, robotic, heartless response that the minister gave on Channel 9 last week.

This minister is clearly completely oblivious to just how out of touch he is. In fact, his comment to Channel 9 reads like a Donald Trump tweet. He said, 'I believe there would be very few South Australians who wouldn't appreciate that I'm 100 per cent committed to delivering better health services.' I cannot believe I am saying this, but there might be fewer people who agree with that comment from the Minister for Health than there are who agree with this government's changes to land tax. What evidence, what skerrick of evidence is there to support the minister's claim that he is 100 per cent committed to better health services?

I can tell you that it is not the upgrade of Modbury Hospital, because that is a Labor government project. It is not the expansion of the emergency department at Lyell McEwin Hospital either, because that is another Labor project, too. It is certainly not the Royal Adelaide Hospital or the biomedical precinct, because they were Labor projects as well. So what is it? Where is this evidence to which the minister can point, evidence that might lead South Australians to actually believe that he is committed to delivering better health services in this state? What the people in the real world are seeing is very different from what minister Wade sees through his rose-tinted glasses.

They see the worst ramping this state has ever seen, they see overcrowding in our hospitals, they see nurses being assaulted at work and they see a stream of South Australian health staff leaving the system every day. You cannot avoid scrutiny forever. The message that awaits this government from South Australian voters in March 2022 might sound strangely familiar to the Minister for Health: 'We apologise to the Marshall Liberal government that you were not able to meet our expectations in delivering leadership to our state during this very important time.' I tell you, they will say it like they actually mean it.

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