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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-05-02 Daily Xml
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Question Time

Ambulance Ramping

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Leader of the Opposition) (14:13): My question is to the Premier. Is fixing ramping the Premier's number one priority? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: Ramping has surged from 1,522 hours in February 2022 to a record 3,968 hours in March 2023, representing a 161 per cent increase, meaning patients and paramedics have never spent this much time stuck outside of hospitals on the ramp.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (14:13): I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. I am happy to reaffirm to the Leader of the Opposition and every other South Australian that the government is wholeheartedly committed to addressing the ramping crisis. In fact, we are working in an incredibly steadfast way to try to start delivering results as best as we possibly can.

As the Leader of the Opposition is well aware, as is the parliament and the rest of the state, this government isn't just throwing an extraordinary amount of resources at the problem. We are actually working through a whole range of other reforms the government can take beyond just increased expenditure in health to try to turn the situation around. On one hand, we see improvements in performance in a way that actually has exceeded the government's expectations at this point, but on the other hand we see areas where there is still dramatic improvement required. The area that fits the latter category is undoubtedly transfer-of-care time.

We would have liked to have seen far better outcomes than we have seen up until this point. However, I am looking forward to the release of the April data in the not too distant future. Obviously, it's 2 May today, so at some point in the days ahead we'll be releasing the April data, where we do expect to see an improvement on what we saw throughout the month of March—which is a good thing.

As those opposite will be aware, this government has put in place a whole range of transparency measures for transfer-of-care timing and the data available so that we can be held to account accordingly, which is a very different approach to the one that was adopted by the former government.

With respect to where we are outperforming expectations up until this point, this is in ambulance response times, which is the key metric that we, of course, committed to before the election.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: What we have made clear to the people of South Australia—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr Cowdrey interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Colton!

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: —when we were asked what constitutes fixing ramping, is we said 'improving ambulance response times', because one of the problems with ramping—

The Hon. D.G. Pisoni: I didn't see a single poster that said that.

The SPEAKER: The member for Unley is warned.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The Premier has the call.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: The main problem with ramping, of course, is that when the ramping is so bad ambulances are stuck to the extent that, when people call 000, their emergency isn't attended to on time. What we have seen over the course of time, pretty much starting in December last year, is a gradual and steady—if not close to continuous—performance around ambulance response times, particularly in the P1 and P2 call-out time frame.

When we came to government in March last year, priority 2 ambulance response times were down at around about 30 to 33 per cent. We have seen that substantially improve over recent months. We need that trajectory to continue. We've still got a lot more to do in that regard, but there are undoubtedly South Australians who are potentially alive today because the ambulance did get to them on time than what would otherwise be the case, had we not made the active investments we have decided upon.

Another way to answer the Leader of the Opposition's important question is to just look at the facts as they currently stand. One of the best ways to objectively analyse or assess what a government's priorities are is where they put in additional new resources—new resources. In that respect, one only has to look at the state budget to see the extraordinary volume of new money that we have allocated to health, because it does represent our number one priority, just as it represents one of the number one concerns that exist in the minds of South Australians, and it is an effort that we will remain committed to throughout the course of the term.

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