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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-12-01 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

Health System

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (15:19): If you turn on your TV at the moment, you are blasted with a 'massive' $1 million advertising campaign from this government telling you how everything is wonderful in the health system. This is the Premier's advertising campaign to try to distract people from what they are actually seeing, with their own eyes, going on in our health system day after day.

I will tell you some of the things you will not hear about in the government's $1 million advertising campaign on our health system. The first is the news today—reported in InDaily, and the family has also contacted the opposition directly—of a woman who had a C-section at the Lyell McEwin Hospital who had to leave the hospital without her baby after just 24 hours, while she was still bleeding. This is incredibly distressing for many South Australians. The new grandmother of the baby contacted us to say:

Now I am angry. Daisy was born via c section YESTERDAY & Lyell McEwin Hospital are saying Mum has to go home without Daisy because they have no beds! 24 hours after a caesarean! Mum is bleeding, on heavy pain killers. Supposed to be a happy time, but they are both in tears.

That is a terrible sign of what is going on in our health system—and you will not be seeing that in this government's massive $1 million advertising campaign. You also will not be hearing about what happened to a family over the weekend at Murray Bridge hospital. It was a journalist, Amanda, who made the revelation of what happened to her husband after a motorcycle accident on the weekend. He was taken to the Murray Bridge hospital and required further care at that hospital, but there was not sufficient ability to provide those services. She said:

Husband in a motorcycle accident this morning. Taken by excellent SA Ambulance to Murray Bridge. Sees doctor. Needs transfer to RAH for internal scans. No ambulances can do today. No beds in Murray Bridge. Night ahead in the emergency here. Broken system.

That is yet another example of what is happening. You are not seeing that in the advertising campaign that is on our TV screens, with glossy pictures.

I tell you what else you also will not see: the images that came out yesterday, videos from both 2pm and 10pm at the Flinders Medical Centre emergency department ramp showing ramped ambulances lined up for hours outside the emergency department, stuck with patients who needed appropriate care or tests inside that hospital who could not get that care. This is happening again and again and again. Ramping is up 576 per cent under this government: not up 5 per cent, not up 10 per cent, but up 576 per cent.

This government had the gall to issue a legal direction this week, saying, 'Ramping is going to stop. We've made it the law that you have to stop ramping.' But they have not put the resources in to make that happen. They have just passed the buck down the line. Our clinicians are not ramping because they want to, because they think it is fun: they are ramping because there are not sufficient resources available to see those patients.

Last night, again, we had the Ambulance Service at OpStat Red, meaning there were not sufficient ambulances available to respond to cases because of that continuing ramping. There were many cases in our community where there were unattended emergency callouts to 000 for cases that needed a lights-and-sirens response—because there were not enough ambulances. Yet again, that is something you do not see in the taxpayer-funded $1 million advertising campaign.

I tell you what you also will not hear about in their advertising campaign: the revelation that came out this morning from Elizabeth Dabars from the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation about our mental health triage line. This is the line somebody goes to if they need support for themselves or a loved one, or somebody they know, who is in a desperate situation. It has been revealed this morning that, under this government, 60 per cent of those phone calls are not even getting answered. These are people in desperate situations. These are people trying to save the lives of other people, and this government does not even put on enough staff so that those phones can get answered.

Obviously, those people end up in our overwhelmed emergency departments. Obviously, those people do not get the care that they need. Despite the government's $1 million advertising saying how great everything is, despite the government prioritising their $662 million basketball stadium, which we will put all into health, I think that the public can see with their own eyes exactly what is happening, and they are forming a view that this government does not care about their health, and they are going to take out their anger on that at the ballot box this March.

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