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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-04-29 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

Public Health Services

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (15:08): There is no doubt that in South Australia during this pandemic our public health experts have served us very well. More than that, the people of South Australia have served us very well, and so far we have done an excellent job, but that does not mean that we should have a suspension of democracy in South Australia. That does not mean that we should have a suspension of the ability of questions to be asked, legitimate questions about the management of our public health services. Nor does it mean that the Premier should use this crisis to make political attacks on people for doing their job as members of parliament and raising concerns.

Every day, there are doctors, there are nurses, there are other health experts, there are patients who raise concerns, who raise questions that they want addressed, who raise suggestions that they want addressed, and we have been working to constructively ask questions, to constructively raise suggestions over the past few months. We are delighted that a number of the constructive recommendations that we have made have now been enacted by the government and we congratulate them for listening to those.

These include, for instance, the suspension of voluntary separation payments; the job cuts in our health services; the closing of the state's border that the Leader of the Opposition raised and then the Premier acted on; abolishing the government's plans to privatise SA Pathology; broadening the testing criteria—

Mr Malinauskas: Sacking KordaMentha.

Mr PICTON: —yes, as the Leader of the Opposition says, suspending the KordaMentha contract; hand sanitiser and soap in classrooms, as the deputy leader has been raising; and free car parking for our hospital staff. All of these are things which we have raised constructively and we are very glad have been taken up. Yet today, what we had, despite this constructive approach, is that the Premier was asked a number of serious, constructive questions about the management of this response, including things that he had been asked weeks, if not over a month before, and had full notice of.

These are things such as the number of ventilators and ICU beds, a very particular issue, and you only have to look around the world to see that; how many casual nurses have been left with no pay, our hardworking health heroes who have been left on the Centrelink queues; screening of visitors to hospital to protect our health staff as the government plan says should be happening; and whether hospitals have procedures in place for PPE use to protect our health staff as the plan that the government has in place says should be happening.

The Premier either refused to answer these questions or answered in an angry tirade, upset that he had even been asked these questions. Yet when a member from the other side asked a question about health, we had a four-minute long answer in great detail. When a constructive, thoughtful question on this side is raised, apparently it is diverting resources from front-line workers, but when the Liberals ask a question, then it gets a fulsome response. This is just playing politics, it is childish and it should not be happening.

People are looking for parliament to be doing its job in representing the people of South Australia, asking questions and doing its job constructively. It is not about questions from us personally; it is about questions from those doctors, those nurses on the front line, and it is about answers for those patients who are very concerned about what might happen. These are the people who need parliament to be doing its job and to be asking questions that need to be asked.

We know that until we raised temperature screening in hospitals, there was no temperature screening of visitors to hospital, whereas other states were doing that and we had a state plan that said that should be happening in a pandemic. It is still very unclear as to whether that is happening across the board. That is a legitimate question for the parliament to be raising and the dismissive nature of the Premier in not answering that question, and thinking that it should not even be asked in the first place is clearly, I think, disgraceful and an angry tirade.

These doctors, nurses, front-line workers deserve answers to these questions, particularly when it comes to personal protection equipment and what procedures are in place for them. We have heard many concerns, particularly from doctors, that there are not enough masks being used in a variety of situations, and it is potentially unsafe for those health staff. That is a question that the parliament deserves to ask and that a responsible government—parliamentary democracy—should be prepared to answer without an upset angry tirade.

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