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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-03-07 Daily Xml
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Ambulance Ramping

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Leader of the Opposition) (14:14): My question is again to the Premier. When will the Premier fix ramping? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: In February 2022 ambulances were ramped for 1,522 hours and in February 2023 they were ramped for 3,036 hours.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:15): I am very happy to reflect on February 2022, because what was in place then? There was a ban on elective surgery operating in our hospitals.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The Premier is called to order. Member for Heysen! The member for Frome knows better. The minister has the call.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: The Leader of the Opposition may be suggesting that we reimpose such a ban, but I do not support that because there are South Australians who have been waiting for their elective surgery operations in pain for significant periods of time. What the Leader of the Opposition is pointing to is not a solution, cancelling all elective surgery in our hospitals. That cannot be the solution because it only makes those people's pain and suffering worse. It only leads to longer term problems in the health system.

What happened as soon as that ban on elective surgery was lifted under the Marshall government in their last few weeks? Ramping went right back up again. Of course, the Leader of the Opposition does not point to the actual last month that they were in office, March 2022, because he points to this month when they had banned elective surgery in our hospitals. It is a complete farce.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Florey, member for Frome!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: Any clinician looking at that would say—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The Premier is called to order. The minister has the call. Order! Member for Morialta, member for Frome! The member for Schubert is on two warnings. The minister has the call.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: If they had bothered to talk to any clinicians, they would clearly explain to them that that is not a solution to fixing problems in our hospital system, cancelling elective surgery across the board. What we need to do is, as I have just outlined, invest in additional beds, additional capacity across our system and additional mental health capacity, which is another one of those key blockages that we have in the system. But we have the Leader of the Opposition, who refers to mental health as a 'very small portfolio area', as he said when he took it off the member for Chaffey and gave it to the member for Frome. There is not an understanding—

Ms Pratt: Twenty-seven beds per 100,000 people. What's your plan for mental health?

The SPEAKER: Member for Frome!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —of the complexities of these issues or why they are important to address issues like mental health in the system. On mental health, we are building 100 extra mental health beds across the system. We are building entirely new mental health rehabilitation wards at Modbury, The QEH and Noarlunga Hospital as well because every day there are people with mental health conditions who get stuck in emergency departments because we simply do not have the beds available for those patients.

It takes time to develop those new wards. It takes time to build them, to put them in place. We will do that as fast as we possibly can. As soon as we came into office, the Premier and I sat down with SA Health. We asked them to open up every possible bed across the system, which they did. Over 200 beds in addition across the system were opened, but clearly we need more than that. We need additional capacity in the system. That is what we said, in terms of our election commitments, that we needed to do.

We are delivering even more than we said at the election in 550 more beds that are in the last budget and are being delivered. That is what is needed to fix the situation, as we said at the election, to fix that ramping crisis, which we defined very clearly at the time as getting ambulance response times back to where they were—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! Minister.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —back in 2018, when we saw this—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —continual reduction of ambulance response times to be now the worst in the country. We are also of course investing in the Ambulance Service as well because there are times when ramping is not a significant issue when there are still issues in terms of ambulance response times, too.

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