Macular Disease

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (15:13): I seek leave to make a brief explanation prior to directing a question to the minister representing the Minister for Health on the subject of the Macular Disease Foundation.

Leave granted.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: Many or most members I understand recently received a letter from the Macular Disease Foundation of Australia, raising an issue on which they have been campaigning for a number of months now. The letter states:

Over the last few weeks I have also become aware of serious delays in appointments escalating the nature of the matter to critical. These people require urgent diagnosis and treatment as delays can result in permanent loss of vision. In addition the process required to get any action on this matter for any individual is highly inadequate, leaving an enormous gap in appropriate treatment to prevent avoidable vision loss.

There is an immediate short term need for intervention at the highest level, as a matter of urgency. Once vision is lost, it cannot be regained.

The situation is dire now but will be catastrophic if action is not taken to support a viable and commonsense solution in establishing the SA Eye Hospital at the current Royal Adelaide Hospital site.

The proposed plans for the redevelopment of the Royal Adelaide Hospital, to treat people with potentially blinding eye conditions, will result in a slashing of eye clinic rooms by 50 per cent. The current, inadequate 24 rooms will be reduced to 11 rooms. Other suburban hospitals are presently incapable of meeting existing demand.

In a comprehensive submission backing the letter (time doesn't permit going through all the detail), a couple of points the foundation makes in supporting its case are that the current outpatient eye clinic at the RAH is working at breaking point, that there is presently a 12 to 24-month wait to get a routine appointment at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, that other outpatient eye clinics at the Royal Adelaide and Lyell McEwin hospitals are not taking any new patients, and that The QEH currently has a 24-month waiting list. People with deteriorating vision are being placed on a long waiting list to get a diagnosis; however, any delays beyond a few weeks of disease onset can lead to irreversible vision loss.

Finally, as an example, the central eye region—that is, the Royal Adelaide and The QEH—currently has a capacity for a maximum 6,000 eye injections per year. It has been estimated that this will need to increase to over 25,000 eye injections per year by 2020. My questions are:

1. Can the minister confirm that his proposed plan for the new Royal Adelaide Hospital will result in the slashing of the number of eye clinic rooms, from 24 to 11; if so, why are he and the government doing this?

2. Does the minister accept the view being expressed by the Macular Disease Foundation that the current crisis has meant that some patients have already suffered avoidable blindness due to the lack of proper treatment?

3. What action does the minister and the government propose to take to tackle this crisis?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation) (15:17): I thank the honourable member for his most important question to the Minister for Health in the other place on correspondence from the Macular Disease Foundation. I will endeavour to take that to the minister and bring back a response.

I have to say that it is beyond cute for this side of the chamber up here to get up on their feet and talk about slashing of funding when their federal compatriots, their federal Liberal government, just took $8 billion out of health and education in this budget—$8 billion out of the South Australian health and education budget. Where are the cries against that? Where are the cries standing up for South Australians about $8 billion worth of slashing of health and education?

You don't hear the Hon. Mr Lucas standing up. Only Dr Duncan McFetridge from the other place actually has the courage to stand up against the federal Liberal government and say that this has gone too far. The Hon. Mr Lucas doesn't, not a peep, nothing out of this side on the opposition benches about this vicious attack on health and education in South Australia. Health and education will suffer under the Liberal Party—always have and always will—and to get in here and ask a question about slashing to health funding is just hypocrisy at its highest level.