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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-10-30 Daily Xml
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Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Ms THOMPSON (Davenport) (15:06): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Can the minister update the house on when GPs will be able to diagnose and treat South Australians with ADHD?

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (15:06): Thank you to the member for Davenport for her interest in this very important topic. As members will know, at the moment, it is very difficult for so many South Australians to get access to a diagnosis for ADHD. At the moment, you have to go to a psychiatrist or a paediatrician to be able to do so. That is a very expensive exercise for South Australians to do. It means that people with money are able to get that diagnosis, and it means people without money are facing significant hardship in doing so and in many cases missing out on care for themselves or for their children, across the state.

What we have embarked upon doing is a reform whereby we will allow GPs to be able to diagnose people from eight and up in South Australia for ADHD. This is a really exciting development. It will be coming about whereby they undertake additional training, and calls of interest for that training have gone out today. GPs across the state are able to apply for that training. That will be undertaken over the course of the next few months, and therefore we expect from February next year at least up to 100 GPs across the state will be able to undertake that diagnosis and make prescriptions available for people for ADHD.

That is incredibly exciting. We have had such a really positive response from people across the community for this. I met just yesterday with a family, Josh and his son Jaxson. Jaxson and his dad were able to describe the change and the impact that finding a diagnosis has meant. They live in Elizabeth at the moment in the member for Elizabeth's electorate, and they have had to travel a significant distance to be able to see a paediatrician to be able to get that diagnosis.

That will be changed from February next year, when we have GPs across the state who are able to provide this diagnosis. This has been supported by the RACGP (the College of General Practitioners), by the College of Physicians, who look after paediatricians, and by the College of Psychiatrists. I want to thank all of those three organisations for their support and working with us to devise this training and make sure it can be rolled out.

It has been fundamentally supported by so many people. You have to wonder: where is the opposition? There have been no negative comments. Surely, someone will come out being negative about this issue. Of course, they did. In steps the most negative person in South Australia, the member for Schubert. She steps up to the plate, ready to be negative about this. What did she say on the TV news last night? Not offering support, not saying this is a great development for families, but saying, 'This will place additional demand on GPs, who are already stretched.' Stepping up to the plate, ready to offer the negative commentary for whatever's happening, you're there: 1800-Negative-Comment.

We have the member for Schubert saying this is going to be detrimental to GPs. What do GPs think about it? Are GPs similarly fretting about what this is going to mean for their workloads? It would be interesting to know. The Chair of the College of GPs, Dr Sian Goodson, was asked about this very subject and she said, 'I don't think this is going to put additional unnecessary pressure and I think we'll find lots of GPs have got ability and capacity to take this on.' So here we've got the member for Schubert always negative and always out there criticising, while the College of GPs is working with us and supporting this important measure that will help patients across South Australia.

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