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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-07-06 Daily Xml
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State Budget

Ms THOMPSON (Davenport) (15:24): Over the last couple of weeks it has been a great pleasure to be out and about in my community sharing the good news about this year's budget. I am excited to be part of a united team that continues to put people at the centre of everything we do, and that is why our budget prioritises what is important to our community.

We are prioritising major long-term investments in health and housing, while delivering the biggest package of cost-of-living relief in our state's history. With Flinders Medical Centre in my electorate of Davenport, many of the people I represent are health workers. One thing they often talk to me about, one thing they often have in common, is that they are tired. Our investments in healthcare reform are helping to ease the pressures on our health system and on our dedicated health workers while we hire more doctors, more nurses and more ambos.

The former Liberal government gravely ignored the significant problems in our health system for four years and now they sit opposite, appearing to enjoy pointing out the problems while still constantly failing to ever have a solution. But we are a government that works on solutions. We are rolling out a range of measures to ease pressure on our hospitals, to reduce ramping and to ensure more ambulances turn up on time. To help reduce bed block, we are increasing the level of medical staffing in metro hospitals on weekends in order to support timely decision-making and increased rates of weekend patient discharge.

We are establishing the State Health Control Centre which will provide 24/7 whole-of-system oversight, improving patient flow and better coordination of critical health resources. We are expanding the Virtual Care Service, which aims to reduce emergency department presentations by providing virtual care support via an expert team of doctors, nurses and paramedics.

Pleasing many parents in my community, and I am sure right across our state, we are permanently extending the Child and Adolescent Virtual Urgent Care Service that connects parents with a team of highly skilled health workers who can assess and provide medical advice for children and young people. This budget will deliver more beds and employ more ambos, more doctors and nurses to boost capacity right across the health network. Solutions.

Again, spending where it is needed most, our united team is addressing the housing crisis with a suite of measures to deliver more social housing and home affordability and give more South Australians the opportunity to own their own home. We are abolishing stamp duty on new homes for first-home buyers, saving buyers tens of thousands of dollars while also encouraging more supply. We are expanding eligibility for the First Home Owner Grant and we are giving eligible first-home buyers who purchase a new property the opportunity to apply for a 2 per cent deposit home loan with HomeStart.

Our housing package supports the delivery of 3,600 new homes and reduces the cost of housing for around a further 14,000 new homes. This package also includes the largest ever land release, provides more rights for renters and makes a generational investment in public housing.

The cost of living is a significant challenge across the country, and we know that families are currently doing it tough. We are continuing the Malinauskas Labor government's record of helping out those most in need by budgeting for more than $470 million in the largest cost-of-living assistance package ever deployed in our state.

Once again, the materials and services charge will be discounted by $100 for each child. This will provide critical relief for families at a time of year when budgets are already tight and costs are escalating. Families in need will also be supported by a $6.5 million boost in the School Breakfast Program in government schools, the largest investment of its kind in our state's history. It will see more than 1.4 million meals provided to kids through breakfast programs at schools right across our state.

We are also investing more than $100 million across 66 government schools and preschools to upgrade and repair important infrastructure, and I am extremely pleased to learn that investment will be going towards Craigburn Primary School and Aberfoyle Park High School in my electorate of Davenport. We want to give our kids the best opportunities at school, and so our investment in mental health and wellbeing of students is an important one.

We are more than halfway towards fully delivering on the government's election commitment to place 100 mental health practitioners into our schools and, as of term 3, I am pleased that there will be a mental health practitioner in two of the three high schools in my electorate. We are a government that wants to deliver for all South Australians and we are focused on the fundamentals while planning for the future.

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