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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-05-19 Daily Xml
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Ambulance Ramping

Mrs HURN (Schubert) (14:28): My question again is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Will the minister advise the house how frequently he or his office receives the ambulance transfer of care data from his department or from the South Australian Ambulance Service?

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:28): I thought I had just explained that we receive it many, many times a day—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —because it is available online. But, sir, you will be glad to know that there is more than that. We have actually—

Mr Gardner interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Morialta is on two warnings. The minister has the call.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: More than that—

Mrs Hurn interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Schubert!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —we have actually delivered and made a commitment before the election, which we have been carrying out since the election, to make available compiled monthly information in relation to that.

Mrs Hurn interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Schubert!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: The shadow minister asks me how that compares. That compares very favourably to what happened under the previous government where every three or four months we had to raise an issue in the media—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Schubert!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —we had to go out and hold press conferences. We had to get journalists to ring the press secretaries—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Schubert! Order!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: Actually, were you a press secretary?

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Florey!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: I wonder if the shadow minister might have been one of those people who got those phone calls asking for that information from noted journalists across Adelaide—

Mrs Hurn interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Schubert!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —and was told, 'Oh, we're not releasing that information. We're not releasing it. We can only release that information every three months apparently.'

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: On a Friday night.

The SPEAKER: Member for West Torrens!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: Well, a Friday night, a drop to a particular journalist here or there—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Florey is warned for a second time.

Mr GARDNER: Point of order.

The SPEAKER: The member for Morialta on a point of order.

Mr GARDNER: Sir, with your encouragement, we give them great latitude in answering these questions. This is nothing near the question: this is debate.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr GARDNER: Personal reflections are utterly inappropriate. The question was very straightforward.

The SPEAKER: Very well.

Mr Whetstone interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Chaffey! The member for Chaffey well knows the standing orders. He was reminded only yesterday of the standing orders in fact, at least one in particular. The minister has the call. I remind the minister that he must address the substance of the question under standing order 98.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: I would love to hear from the shadow minister in terms of her experience working in government about how she did things to provide information to the public about ambulance ramping statistics because she played a very pivotal role in the previous government and great adviser to the opposition leader—

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, the member for West Torrens!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —but, more than that, to the—

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for West Torrens!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —former Premier, the member for Dunstan, and I think it would be very interesting for us all to learn how that experience worked. But what I can outline is that we have a tripling of that information being given to the public under this government—

Mrs Hurn interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Schubert!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —because we have been providing that information every month. We have done it for the past two months and not to one journalist or the other. We have been putting them in media releases—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Schubert!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —so everyone can get access to that information.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The minister has the call. Member for Lee! Premier!

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! Member for Taylor!

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! Member for Chaffey! Minister, please be seated. The member for Hammond and the member for Florey can depart the chamber under 137A for 15 minutes.

The honourable members for Hammond and Florey having withdrawn from the chamber:

The SPEAKER: The minister has the call.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: This is a very serious issue and it is one that we made our key priority at the election. As I outlined in my ministerial statement today, we made our key priority in terms of investing in the health service, opening additional beds, making sure that we are starting that work in terms of building additional wards and in fact have outlined plans for even more—hopefully, in partnership with a new federal government—than we committed to at the previous election. The shadow minister, in her role, will be able to access the minute-by-minute information. She will also be able to access a tripling of—

Mrs Hurn interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —the publicly released compiled information—

Mrs Hurn interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —as per our election commitment at the last election—

Mrs Hurn interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Schubert is warned.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —because very clearly, in opposition, we called—

The Hon. N.F. Cook interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The Minister for Human Services is called to order. The minister has the call.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —on the then government to release monthly statistics. They didn't do it. We committed to releasing monthly statistics—

Mr Gardner interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Morialta!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: We were elected and now we are doing it.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: The shadow minister was part of a government—

Mrs Hurn interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Schubert!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —that did not release information until four months down the track and now she is here, a few weeks later, complaining about our tripling of the transparency available to South Australians. Well, I will let people be the judge of that.

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