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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-05-19 Daily Xml
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Regional Health Services

Ms PRATT (Frome) (15:02): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Will the minister match the Marshall Liberal government's election promise to invest $7 million into the much-needed safety upgrades for eight regional helipads in Berri, Loxton, Victor Harbor, Kangaroo Island, Port Pirie, Murray Bridge, Wallaroo and Clare?

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan: Were they promised the day before the election too?

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (15:02): Yes, maybe I missed this. Maybe this was another one of those election promises the day before the election, when they started to realise that they were in a bit of strife in a few seats.

I am very happy to look into the projects that the member for Frome has raised. There clearly are needs across regional South Australia. I know that this is something that the Premier, when he was for a few months the Minister for Health previously, saw a significant increase in capital expenditure into regional hospitals and health care then, and now we're about to increase that even more in this upcoming state budget.

There is a lot to do. There are a lot of projects that need to be invested in. Certainly, something that was announced a couple of days before the election by the outgoing government we are happy to look into. I am very keen to work with all of our hospitals, all of our hospital boards but, importantly, the health advisory councils as well in terms of the priorities they have for their local areas.

We obviously need to match them up against what the key priorities are in terms of addressing healthcare needs in regional South Australia, improving those capabilities of our regional hospitals, which can ultimately lead to making sure that we can care for people closer to their home and also projects where we can make sure that we improve our workforce capability in regional hospitals. Particularly when you talk to many regional doctors, nurses and also patients, as we do, capital is one thing but the workforce is the critical issue.

While capital investment is important, and we are expanding upon that, we need to make sure that we do everything possible in terms of addressing the workforce situation in country hospitals. That is certainly one of the priorities. We have been elected to government in terms of actually having a long-term workforce plan, which doesn't exist at the moment, and we are seeing significant workforce pressures right across country South Australia that are leading to our health services being under substantial pressure.

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