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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-10-16 Daily Xml
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Patient Assistance Transport Scheme

Mr McBRIDE (MacKillop) (14:18): My question is to the Minister for Health. Will the government consider an increased travel and accommodation subsidy for people using the Patient Assistance Transport Scheme. With your leave, Mr Speaker, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr McBRIDE: Constituents on the Limestone Coast are regular users of the scheme but the subsidies, currently 32¢ per kilometre for travel and up to $40 a night for accommodation, aren't keeping up with the rising costs of living and expenses.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:19): I thank the member for MacKillop for his question and his passionate advocacy on behalf of his constituents when it comes to health care. I know PATS is a very important scheme for everybody in country Australia in terms of being able to access health care and being able to address the cost of meeting travel expenses when accessing health care where people need to travel to do so.

This is something where, when we came to government, we took some very quick action to try to address. In fact, PATS hadn't had changes in a major way made to the rates provided in the past decade until we made the decision to double the fuel subsidy from 16¢ to 32¢. In fact, that's now also subject to indexation for the first time ever as well, so that's now up to 33.6¢. This is the biggest change in a decade that has happened to PATS. It has meant that we have significantly increased the payments that are being made to the community.

In fact, the advice that I have is that we have now effectively doubled the amount of payments that we are making through PATS compared to when we came to government. In 2021-22, there was $7.47 million worth of payments made through PATS. Right now, in the 2024-25 financial year, it was $14.7 million, so it's almost a complete doubling of the amount of payments that we are making through PATS.

A large amount of that is due to the increase that we have made to the fuel subsidy, but the other effect that we believe is due to the fact that those fuel subsidies are now larger is that more people who are eligible for PATS, who didn't even bother putting in applications beforehand, are now putting in applications. We have seen those application numbers increase from 33,000 claims up to over 50,000 claims that are now being made, so that is obviously helping more people across country South Australia meet those travel requirements, and they were very long overdue.

In terms of other initiatives that we can take, of course this is a scheme that we always have under review and we are always considering other improvements that could be made to PATS. I know, Mr Speaker, you have been particularly advocating in terms of Kangaroo Island, and we have made some changes in terms of Kangaroo Island's eligibility to make it even easier for people from the island to be able to access PATS and support for the ferry costs. I understand we have also made some changes in terms of prostheses eligibility as well, but we will continue to keep this under review. We will continue to listen to member advocates such as the member for MacKillop on what changes could be made into the future.

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