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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-06-18 Daily Xml
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MATTERS OF INTEREST

SOCIAL INCLUSION

The Hon. C.V. SCHAEFER (15:23): I would like to speak today about social inclusion. This government has given much lip service to social inclusion and to equity. It has even appointed a Commissioner for Social Inclusion but, apparently, those lofty ideals apply only to those living within a city. The latest blow to rural South Australia (the Country Health Care Plan) relegates those who live in the two-thirds of the land mass of the state not in a city to be treated by this government to third world health care.

Before I came down here, I heard the minister say that nothing will change; all will be as it was. That is delusional. Why will a GP stay in a remote area if he or she has no access to a hospital and cannot provide services? There is a lot in this report (South Australia's Country Health Care Plan) which says that over time 'we will explore', and 'we may do this, and we may do that.' Over time, what will happen is that general practitioners from outside the city will be starved out of a living and will leave country areas.

If you are a traveller on Highway 1 you had better not have an accident anywhere between Port Augusta and Ceduna, a distance of some 450 to 500 kilometres, because under this plan there is no medical assistance over that area. Similarly, there is no medical assistance north of about Clare and definitely none north of Port Augusta. I will not go into details of the areas affected in the South-East; however, all this state has been cruelly and despicably treated by the Rann government and minister Hill—or, indeed, by minister Hill's bureaucrats, because I remember them wanting to do something similar to this when I was a country health board member before I was ever a member of parliament.

The Hon. J.S.L. Dawkins interjecting:

The Hon. C.V. SCHAEFER: There are no country health boards now; that was the first wedge. However, over all that time the bureaucrats have been saying that these hospitals do not pay their way and that therefore they will be closed. Of course they do not pay their way, and they never will; they are there because wherever people live—even in Zimbabwe—they are entitled to basic good health care, basic good education, and basic good transport systems. In one fell swoop this government has regulated country people to Third World health care.

The report actually states that we have an ageing population—as if we did not know that. If you have no GP what do you do if you live at Kimba—or perhaps even as I did, at Buckleboo, some 45 kilometres from Kimba—and you happen to have type 2 diabetes and need a repeat prescription? There is no GP and under this scheme there will be no GP, other than at Whyalla or Port Lincoln. Now, from memory, it is about 350 kilometres from Kimba to Port Lincoln and about 180 kilometres from Kimba to Whyalla. If you are an aged person, as are my parents, what are you meant to do? Are you meant to get in a car and drive to Whyalla to get a repeat prescription for your medication?

How hard has this government thought about this? It says it will provide additional primary health care. Most of all people want a doctor. That is the first type of care people want; they want to be able to look a doctor in the face. Will they have to learn to use the internet and perhaps get their medicines from overseas? There will be no access under this plan.

This plan is one of the cruellest, most short-sighted, mean-spirited pieces of legislation I have seen in my lifetime. It clearly puts up in lights that this government has no regard for people outside large cities. Worse than that, it actually shows that those people are at the mercy of a bureaucracy that has even less regard for them than those of you who are members of parliament. I urge you all to please apply just a little bit of social decency to country people.

Time expired.

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