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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-03-02 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

SA Ambulance Service

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (15:30): While we have been meeting here in parliament, down the road at the Entertainment Centre hundreds of our frontline paramedics have been meeting to talk about the crisis that is crippling our health system, the crisis that is seeing lives being put at risk on a daily basis, the crisis that is forcing our frontline health heroes to speak out about the dangerous situation that they see for their patients.

Remember how last year we were all calling our frontline health workers heroes. That seems to have disappeared because now the government is threatening them with ICAC, now the government is threatening to silence them, now the government is saying that they are playing industrial spaghetti. It is not listening to those frontline health heroes when they are speaking out on behalf of their patients about the absolute crisis that they are seeing day in, day out.

We are seeing it at every single level through the health system, but the Ambulance Service always cops the brunt because, whenever there is an issue in the community, they get that; when there is an issue in the hospitals, they get that. What we are seeing at the moment is overwhelming demand, under-resourcing and record levels of ramping, which means that when people call for an ambulance quite often there is not one to respond to them.

We saw this on Sunday night when over 130 priority cases across our community were not able to be responded to in time because of that crisis hitting our health system. We saw last night and yesterday huge queues of ambulances and paramedics but, importantly, patients stuck outside our major hospitals, unable to get the care that they need.

We saw this in a report that the government themselves produced, covering the end of last year, that was released only after action from the union in the Coroner's Court to make that available. This report shows in black and white the impact that this is having on patients. It showed that at the end of last year there were 38 patients potentially at risk of harm due to the fact that ambulances took so long to respond. Two of those patients sadly passed away.

This is causing the loss of South Australian lives—we know this from the government's own report—and this will continue to happen unless we see some action from the government to address it. While we have seen paramedics taking this action, going out to speak on behalf of their patients, here in the parliament we have had excuse after excuse and political bluster after political bluster from the government. There is no appreciation of the difficulties, no commitment to fix those difficulties, ramping is doubling and response time is getting worse.

The Productivity Commission report out last month showed a 14 per cent worsening in two years of response times in South Australia while we see ambulances in other states improving their response times. We have seen many leaked videos and audio clips of dispatchers desperately calling out for paramedics because there are no ambulances to respond to urgent cases, including people involved in car crashes, people who have had cardiac incidents and people who have had falls, who are waiting hours to get the care they need.

This week in hospitals we heard doctors speaking out on behalf of patients who have been stuck inside our emergency departments, one patient this week being stuck in an emergency department for 88 hours. That is almost four days stuck inside an emergency department waiting for a bed in a hospital. That cannot be acceptable by anyone's standard, but according to the Premier everything is going fine and everything is getting better despite all evidence to the contrary.

We heard a cavalcade of excuses. The one I like best is, 'Well, things are bad because we are doing this major, huge renovation of Flinders Medical Centre.' When we were in government we spent $400 million redeveloping Flinders Medical Centre. How big is their major redevelopment at Flinders Medical Centre at the moment? $8 million dollars. This is in the context of the state budget that we see the absolute chaos that is here.

We even have now the CEO of the SA Ambulance Service publicly saying very clearly that he does not think there is enough funding for his Ambulance Service. He said that the last funding they received in addition was back in 2018 after the commitment in December 2017 by the previous minister, the member for Croydon. After that, we have seen no additional spending.

An honourable member interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The Minister for Education rises on a point of order.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: The convention of the house has been that members of the Labor Party ding their bells and say that time has expired when the time has expired—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, members on my left! I will rule on the point of order. Does the member for Lee rise on the point of order?

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: That is a wholly bogus point of order and, if anything, it only served to interrupt the business of the house. I ask that you call the member for Morialta on a point of order for his behaviour, sir. That is appalling. The standard in this place is that there is a discretion the Speaker has, as set out in the standing orders—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: —that people might go over time in their grievance. He knows that. He is merely seeking to interrupt the member for Kaurna.

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Lee will resume his seat. There is no point of order. I have reminded members on perhaps a number of occasions of the discretion of the Speaker with respect to time. Members will observe that we have been experiencing some discrepancy in relation to the electronic monitors and, on occasion, I have had to resort to a secondary timer. In all of those circumstances, I remind members that an indication as to the expiry of time is no occasion to commence interjections of any kind. I will allow the member for Kaurna a short time in which to conclude his remarks, noting that the time for the member's contribution has otherwise expired.

Mr PICTON: Nothing sums up the problem more than the response we just heard from the Minister for Education. They do not care about these issues. They are fiddling while Rome burns. They should hang their heads in shame. They should fix these issues and they should listen—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr PICTON: —to our frontline health heroes instead of being pedantic here in the parliament.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Kaurna's time has expired.

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