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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-11-27 Daily Xml
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Hospital Beds

Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (14:19): My question is again to the Premier. Given the Premier went to the election promising more hospital beds, why is the government closing 178 beds? With your leave, Mr Speaker, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr MALINAUSKAS: Page 33 of corporate liquidator KordaMentha's second report says that length-of-stay reductions would lead to 65,000 occupied bed days being reduced by 2021. This reduction is the equivalent of 178 hospital beds closing.

The Hon. D.G. Pisoni interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The Minister for Industry is warned. The Premier will be seated. Premier, please be seated.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr Teague interjecting:

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

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan interjecting:

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

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:20): So far, can I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his dream questions. I couldn't have actually written these better myself—incredible extrapolation from the Leader of the Opposition, of course. Reducing—

Mr Malinauskas: That's what the report says: 65,000 bed days gone—

The SPEAKER: Order! Leader, you have asked your question. I would like to hear the answer.

Mr Patterson interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Morphett is warned.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: The report makes it very clear that there are quite a lot of unnecessary overnight stays within our health system at the moment.

An honourable member: Unnecessary?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: Yes, unnecessary. Absolutely unnecessary. In case those opposite haven't really wanted to follow this issue, because it's a very serious issue, we should be making sure that our acute beds in our major teaching hospitals are used for optimal performance, and that is not bed block. Reducing unnecessary overnight stays will free up those beds for further service, and that is precisely what an efficient system is all about. Let me tell you again and remind this house of what we have inherited.

The Central Adelaide Local Health Network has been massively over budget—massively over budget. Now, to address that—

Mr Malinauskas interjecting:

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: And what Labor planned to do, and what they took to the election, was massive and savage cuts to the health budget. They have forgotten that. It was only nine months ago that their budget provided for massive and savage cuts to the health system. I don't know whether they were paying attention in September—they were probably busy—but in September we brought down a document called the state budget.

What you would note from the state budget is that the government put an additional $800 million back into the health budget in South Australia because we needed to make sure that we could provide for the people here in South Australia to have a high-quality health system. We rejected the savage cuts built into the forward estimates by those opposite and put nearly $800 million worth of new money into the health budget. That's exactly what we will do, and we will not apologise for delivering services efficiently. We think that we are acting prudently on behalf of the taxpayers of this state.

Let's be quite clear: the taxpayers don't want us wasting money. What they want is an efficient health system in South Australia. The interesting point here is that we are not the only state that operates a hospital. In fact, every January you can have a look at the Report on Government Services—good reading—and you can see where each of our hospitals and each of our LHNs sit in terms of pricing and cost around Australia. Unfortunately, what we inherited from those opposite was the Central Adelaide Local Health Network being at the bottom of the tables.

The people of South Australia deserve much better. Rather than kick this problem down the road, rather than sweep it under the mat, like those opposite do, we are going to address it. Let me tell you, those opposite had multiple warnings over a long period of time: report after report after report, going as far back as 2012, was ignored. We won't be ignoring the recommendations. We won't be ignoring the implementation plan. We will be implementing it and improving health outcomes for all South Australians.

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