HANSARD
SITTING CALENDAR
SEARCH
LIVE BROADCAST
Hansard Dynamic Member Index
House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-04-30 Daily Xml
Contents
Xml

Women's and Children's Hospital

Ms HOOD (Adelaide) (15:31): Next month will actually mark eight years since I became a mum at the Women's and Children's Hospital. As a new mum, I have spent a fair bit of time at the women's and kids both for my own physio treatment and physio treatment for my daughter, as well as those unplanned trips to the emergency department for various sicknesses or ailments, and over the last couple of years of my candidacy for the seat of Adelaide I started noticing so many staff at the Women's and Children's beginning to struggle. They were not being heard by the former Marshall Liberal government.

So I took it upon myself, along with Professor John Svigos and Professor Warren Jones to start talking to the staff and the patients and the parents outside of the Women's and Children's Hospital. We would stand out the front for hours with a petition calling for more support and more resources for our health heroes at the Women's and Children's Hospital because they simply were not being heard. That was a key commitment towards the state election: to invest in our Women's and Children's, and also to build a Women's and Children's that was actually going to last for the future.

In our very first budget, we committed an extra $37 million to provide an extra 60 staff at the current Women's and Children's Hospital. That was for doctors with various specialties and also an extra 12 nurses specialising in areas such as childhood cancer and childhood mental health. One of our major key commitments was to build a bigger and better new Women's and Children's Hospital, and today it was very special to be able to join the Premier and the health minister and key people within SA Health to turn the sod at the site of the brand-new Women's and Children's Hospital.

We made some very difficult decisions in making sure that we can provide a bigger and better Women's and Children's Hospital for the women and children of our state because the former Marshall Liberal government completely dropped the ball in this area. In many cases, you might say they picked up a basketball instead, remembering they were going to build a basketball stadium rather than invest in actually building a proper Women's and Children's Hospital. Their design would have provided just one extra overnight bed. Imagine spending billions of dollars to deliver a hospital that had only one extra overnight bed. We were not going to stand for it, and today it was very exciting, as I was saying, to break ground on a brand-new Women's and Children's Hospital.

The new hospital will provide 414 overnight beds, an additional 56 beds compared with the current hospital, and further capacity to add an extra 20 beds in the future. It will have a larger emergency department, with 43 treatment spaces, state-of-the-art surgical suites and a dedicated onsite helipad. The new site will provide room for both the new Women's and Children's Hospital and the Royal Adelaide Hospital to expand in the future.

Importantly, the larger site will allow all critical care services to be co-located on one floor, including birthing, theatres, paediatric ICU and neonatal ICU. It will also benefit from a four-bed integrated intensive care unit for women, co-located with the paediatric ICU, enabling women requiring high-level care to remain at the Women's and Children's Hospital rather than being transported to the RAH. This project is on track for completion in 2030-31. As I was saying, it was a very special moment to be able to break ground at the new Women's and Children's Hospital site.

I spoke about extra staff, and that is incredibly important. In two years, we have recruited 329 extra doctors, 691 extra nurses, 219 extra ambos, and 193 extra allied health professionals. That is 1,432 extra health staff who will support the government's commitment to open 550 more beds right across the system, including 280 beds by the end of next year. I am very proud to be part of a Malinauskas Labor government that is prioritising the health of South Australians.

PARLIAMENTARY BUSINESS
MEMBERS
GET INVOLVED
ABOUT PARLIAMENT
VISIT
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
CONTACT