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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-12-04 Daily Xml
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SA Health, ICAC Report

Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (14:29): My question is to the Premier. Can the Premier explain why he told the house yesterday that he had not completed reading the report some hours after he had announced the interagency task force as a response to the report he told the parliament he had not read?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:30): They are really not understanding what is going on here. Our response—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The Leader of the Opposition may not like what the Premier is saying, but that is not an excuse to carry on like this.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: It is a pity that those opposite do not take the extensive work that is now required to fix our health system in South Australia seriously. At every opportunity they want to talk about, 'What time was the report received? What time was the report read? When did you send your letter? Who is appointed?' rather than thinking about what is important here, and that is fixing the complete and utter shambles that we received from the previous government.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Lee is on two warnings.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: When I look through the report, it is very clear that there is a series of very important issues that have been raised by the commissioner, issues to do with the culture within SA Health, issues to do with poor records management, issues to do with time and attendance recording—

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan: Why don't you want it properly investigated?

The SPEAKER: The member for Lee can leave for the remainder of question time under 137A.

The honourable member for Lee having withdrawn from the chamber:

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: —the private practice opportunities for salaried specialists, procurement, clinical trials, special purpose funds. There is a range of issues raised in this report. I again make the comment that these are not issues which are entirely new to the government, and they are certainly not entirely new, or new in any way, shape or form, to those opposite, especially the Leader of the Opposition, who would have been fully aware of these when he was the minister for health here in South Australia.

But, unlike the previous government, who wanted to tell everybody that everything was fine, everything was dandy, everything was going very well within the Central Adelaide Local Health Network, we are taking responsibility for the massive transformation which is now required to get our health system to an acceptable level, and I believe that we are making incredible progress on this task.

What we received into the parliament yesterday, tabled by the Speaker, and I presume tabled by the President in another place, was a very useful report from the commissioner. We have formed the opinion to establish an interagency task force to look into every aspect of this report, look into the issues that were raised previously, going back several years, and then to make recommendations to the government. We will, of course, take that advice and then we will form our opinion.

But I want to be very clear: our response to the report wasn't the establishment of the committee; that will be used to inform our response. Secondly, I make the point that our task of fixing the mess that we inherited didn't start yesterday or today or next year: it started the very first day that we moved onto the treasury bench. Since that time, we have been working extraordinarily hard to improve outcomes for the people of South Australia: more than a billion dollars reinvested into the health system in South Australia and a completely different arrangement with regard to the governance of health in South Australia, so taking it away from the central bureaucracy and moving that governance down to an expanded local health network arrangement.

There were five local health networks under the previous government, but there weren't boards in place to actually govern those local health networks. We have expanded that from five to 10 and, more importantly, we have put governance arrangements in place. They came into effect on 1 July this year. On 1 July this year, we made a major transformation of the governance of our local health networks and, ultimately, our health services in South Australia. We based that on best practice around the country. It is early days, but I am sure that we are on the right track.

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