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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-02-09 Daily Xml
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SA Pathology

Mrs HURN (Schubert) (14:39): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. What is the minister's response to comments made by frontline nurses like Kally? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mrs HURN: After learning about the government's plan to cut half the nurse roles at SA Pathology, Kally commented on the minister's social media post, which was about new nursing graduates and how positive that was. She wrote, 'Unless you're a nurse working for SA Pathology who has just been told today that over 50% of their jobs are surplus to requirements,' going on to add, 'What an amazing thank you for leading the state's COVID testing response.'

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:40): As I said yesterday in response to what is being consulted on by SA Health and by SA Pathology at the moment, two very clear things are in place under this government. We have got very clear policies in regard to the fact that (a) we will not be privatising SA Pathology, as was mooted in the 2018 State Budget by the previous government. We will be absolutely ruling that out.

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: The other thing that we are ruling out is making our frontline nurses redundant, unlike what happened under the previous government, where some 200 nurses—including during the pandemic—were made redundant. In fact, we are hiring more nurses. We have doubled the recruitment of graduate nurses across SA Health. SA Pathology is doing a consultation in the context of its 1,800 staff, a relatively small number of its staff, but we have absolutely got employment for every possible nurse we can across SA Health. SA Health is going through a consultation process; we will listen to the feedback and make sure—

Mrs Hurn interjecting:

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —that at the end of that SA Pathology has the right service model to make sure it can deliver the services it needs to.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Before we go to the next question, the member for Schubert is warned for the first time.

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