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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-10-16 Daily Xml
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Nurses Dispute

Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (14:32): I will try again. My question is again to the Premier. With the health minister unable to resolve the dispute with nurses, when will the Premier—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! Please, members on my right, the Leader of the Opposition has the call.

Mr MALINAUSKAS: When will the Premier step up and intervene to resolve the dispute?

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Badcoe is called to order. The Premier has the call.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:33): We have had four weeks out of parliament and these are the questions that are coming from the opposition.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The leader will not shout.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! Will the Premier please be seated. You have asked the question; arguably, it did contain argument. The Premier has risen to answer the question—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The Premier has risen to answer a question. He deserves to be heard in silence, and I will listen carefully. The Premier has the call.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: Thank you, sir. We are working very hard to make sure that we improve on the system we inherited from those opposite. What a complete and utter mess we were left by the former minister for health in South Australia, who now knows no shame. Who did the Leader of the Opposition appoint to look after the health portfolio? None other than the Chief of Staff to the architect of Transforming Health in South Australia. It knows no bounds, sir.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Point of order, Mr Speaker: this is debate.

The SPEAKER: Debate. I uphold the point of order. Is the Premier coming back to intervention?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: We've been left some challenges, sir. We are up to fixing the mess that was left to us by the previous government. It's not going to be corrected overnight.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: That's why we have made sure that we have been able to put—

Mr Malinauskas interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The leader is called to order.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: —a commitment for 50 new beds into the system. We are cleaning up the mess left by Labor. What did they expect when they closed more than 200 beds at the Repat? A net loss of more than 100 beds in the southern system. What did they expect? Did they expect that that was actually going to rush more people through the system? That's the situation that we were left with, and it is a mess, but we are not complaining about it. We're fixing it up. But I won't take these brazen comments from the Leader of the Opposition that somehow it has had nothing to do with the former government.

It will take some time. We're up to the task and we're going to fix the system. Not only that, we are going to actually do our best to deliver the best health system in the country. That's why in the budget that was just handed down a few weeks ago we relieved the health budget of more than $800 million worth of cuts imposed upon it by the former government in the Mid-Year Budget Review, just snuck through days before Christmas last year, when they thought nobody was noticing. So we relieved the budget of $800 million worth of Labor's punishing cuts. We've still got a big task to do to clean it up, but we're up for the task.

The SPEAKER: Before I call the member for Colton, I call the following members to order: the member for Ramsay, the member for Waite and the member for Kavel.

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