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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-06-03 Daily Xml
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Transforming Health

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (16:32): I move:

That this council calls on the government to—

1. Stop the closure of the Repatriation General Hospital; and

2. Listen to the broader community regarding the Transforming Health changes.

This is a simple but very important motion. I do not believe there has been proper debate whatsoever on issues around Transforming Health. Whilst I acknowledge that health has a huge impact on the budget of any government and that as we have an ageing population we are going to see an ever-increasing demand on health, to cut the budget to the extent that this government is proposing for political expediency rather than for the best interests of the community is something that I believe the parliament should have a much bigger say in.

I am not sure what the actual amount of money the government wants to save with respect to Transforming Health, but the talk around South Australia is that it could be about 10 per cent of their budget. As it is the largest budget within government, we are talking of somewhere around $500 million—half a billion dollars a year. To cut half a billion dollars out of health is a serious, serious issue, because a budget cut of that size is going to have impact on one of the most important aspects of anybody's life, and that is the health and wellbeing of those people.

I congratulate and put on the public record my appreciation of a highly respected and former Labor member of parliament who served the western suburbs for some period of time. In fact, it was not that person's fault that they missed out on being in parliament in 1993 but rather the fault of that person's government, the Labor government, because of the State Bank. Mr Kevin Hamilton, and his good wife, Maureen Hamilton, have been absolute champions in highlighting the concerns and problems around the closure of the Repatriation General Hospital and also the issues around Transforming Health.

It is not only them: it is interesting that there are other Labor members: the former deputy leader of the Labor Party in this state, Mr Ralph Clarke, was at a meeting I was at with my colleagues. Another was the former federal Labor member for Port Adelaide, Mr Rod Sawford. So, we have former Labor members of parliament coming out publicly saying that what this government is doing is wrong.

In fact, Ralph Clarke went so far as to say that he could not agree whatsoever with the decision to downsize and close the emergency department at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, because he said that, when he was the deputy leader of the Labor Party and the Hon. Mike Rann was the leader, they made an absolute commitment to the western suburbs people to actually enhance and grow The Queen Elizabeth Hospital for them. He said it was a thorough and complete broken promise and that, to paraphrase what he said at the meeting at the Semaphore Port Adelaide RSL, the Labor Party today in government should hang its head in shame.

I will not make all my remarks on this motion today, but want to focus on the first part of the motion and then seek leave to conclude my remarks. The first part of the motion is to do with the closure of the Repatriation General Hospital. We have returned members of the defence forces out on the steps of parliament right this very minute who have been there for something like 60 days now and who are actually standing up for what the rank and file returned men and women in this state are saying, and that is that they do not want to see a closure of the Repatriation General Hospital.

The government is hanging its hat on the fact that it has advice from the Veterans Advisory Council that they no longer see the need for the continuation of the Repatriation General Hospital. I will pursue that matter in the near future. I, and I am sure many of my colleagues in this parliament, have received letters from individual sub-branches of the RSL saying that they are absolutely opposed to the closure.

I understand that at the moment the official position of the RSL is that it is also opposed to the closure, but I can only say that I understand that to be the situation based on the submission that they put to the government when submissions were called, and over 5,000 submissions were received. I do not believe there has been an updated position from the RSL, and therefore I take it that the RSL is still opposed to the closure of the Repatriation General Hospital.

I went to a briefing with some of my colleagues at the invitation of the honourable Minister for Health, Jack Snelling, and the person in charge of this restructure, Transforming Health, Professor Keefe. In those discussions I raised some basic issues that I am well aware of. We all have stories we can tell about our own family members who have had a relationship one way or another with the Repatriation General Hospital, and I am one of those. As just one example, I spent way too much time out there when I was a young person visiting my father after World War II.

Some of that time was spent when he had 13 major operations to try to give him some quality of life from injuries in the war and some of that time was actually at Ward 17, because he came home, like so many returned people, with some psychiatric matters, as you would if you were several years on the HMAS Sydney as in this example of my father. For him it was good as he got off, with two others, but tragically he lost all of his 645 mates. You do not have that happen to you and not end up with some psychological health matters as well. I have seen Ward 17 time and time again. That is just a personal example, but there are hundreds of thousands of those examples.

The government's argument and the spin that is being brought by some of those people who support the government in the closure of the Repatriation General Hospital is, 'Oh, well. It's tired and it's rundown and it's going to cost a lot of money to rebuild it.' It is not as tired and rundown as one would think and the reality is that there has been a deliberate attempt by this government, basically since they have been in office, to make it look like it is rundown. It has hardly seen a paintbrush. I suggest that if you do not paint your own home every now and again it is going to look a little rundown. Just as the case was with the RAH, where there was probably somewhere in the tune of $250 million spent building new infrastructure prior to the decision to close that down and build a brand-new hospital, there has also been millions of dollars spent at the Repatriation General Hospital.

The other fact is that there is something like $250 million of money apparently allocated that we will hear more about on budget day (18 June) into the forward estimates for upgrading and building some new accommodation in other areas to offset the closure of the Repatriation General Hospital. I would suggest that we would be better off putting that $250 million into a staged rebuild of the Repatriation General Hospital and that would be better for health outcomes for South Australians. If they are going to spend the money somewhere, acknowledging that they have to do some capital works upgrades, why are they not going to spend that money at the Repat?

Further to that, why is the government misleading the South Australian community and particularly the veterans, by saying, 'Okay, the sacred and most important facility is Ward 17, the psychiatric unit.' Tragically, Australia is going to be in conflict ongoing into the foreseeable future; that is the reality we face. The wars and conflicts that our troops, men and women, are going to now will actually have even higher mental health illness matters as a result than even World War I and World War II because of the very nature of these particular conflicts that they are going to encounter and are encountering right now.

So there will be an increased demand for psychiatric support for post-traumatic stress disorder as it is now known. Back in my younger day, it was actually called war neurosis. To me it is the same thing. It means that it is a special type of mental health illness that you pick up when you are in those sorts of conflicts. It is different to other mental health issues and therefore they need specialised dedicated care and facilities to help them get well, and Ward 17 has done that for so long.

But do you know what? I have discussed this matter with Martin Hamilton-Smith and I am incredibly disappointed that he has not stood up and fought for veterans. I am incredibly disappointed that someone who has actually been in the services and is now given the absolute privilege of representing them in the state arena of government has not stood up and fought for the saving of the Repatriation General Hospital. I say 'Martin, why have you not stood up? Please explain to the community of South Australia why you have not stood up.'

The men and women are saying to me that they are disappointed. When I go to these meetings they actually have a poster and they have named Martin Hamilton-Smith as a traitor on that poster. That is how they treat people who let them down—the Hon. Martin Hamilton-Smith is a traitor. That is a serious issue, but that is what these returned people see. I would ask him to stand up in cabinet and say, 'We can go no further with this.'

I am told that the Hon. Martin Hamilton-Smith, the Minister for Veterans' Affairs in South Australia, and others have said, 'Well, we haven't made a decision yet on whether or not we are going to locate a new Ward 17'—for which I think they have about $15 million allocated—'we might still build that on the campus.' How can they do that?

The Transforming Health document states that you cannot have a stand-alone psychiatric facility of any type, let alone specialised psychiatric facilities for returned men and women. You cannot have it as a stand-alone facility. It clearly states that it has to have surgical and medical facilities there with it. I know that, and I am no psychiatrist. I am not the Minister for Veterans' Affairs but I do know that, as I explained earlier in my remarks. They are again misleading the community because they actually want to simmer things a little bit, and that is wrong.

The minister indicated that one option may be to build a new psychiatric ward or unit on the new RAH site. He said that there is plenty of land there. That is the absolute wrong place to build a psychiatric ward. One of the important facets about where Ward 17 is located at the moment is that it is located in an open, spacious area away from hotels, away from where you can walk just across the road (like with the new RAH) and access illicit drugs or other drugs. It is actually a quarantined area to a certain extent. It also has a lot of open space and gardens. It allows people to get out and sit in that open area, and that is what you need with psychiatric illnesses, when you are rehabilitating and getting well again. When you are trying to get well you need that open space. Even the beautiful gully breezes that come down off the foothills are of benefit to those people.

The other point that I want to raise—and I am going to have more to say in my summing up after other colleagues have spoken—is about expressions of interest. I have had some indications of possible bidders for part of that campus and of some of the allegations and discussions that have already occurred behind closed doors and the absolute rush to now get expressions of interest. However, I also want to touch on this one key point now: the government says that we have more acute care beds per capita than any other state.

The Hon. S.G. Wade: They bragged about it.

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: That's what they say, and it is true. To a great extent, it is a good thing. Now the government is saying that they actually want to pool down those bed numbers to at least the national average and hopefully, they are saying, a little below the national average. They also forget that we have a greater proportion of an ageing population than any other state in Australia.

I would suggest that we will actually never be able to look after our constituents—the South Australians who need medical and surgical care and hospitalisation—if we are going to try to set up at around the average. What are they going to do? They are going to push them in and then push them out. They will go out before they are well enough to be home and they are going to come back in, which will not help their budget. They will not be able to get a lot of those people through day surgery. What we are seeing is the closure of 300 beds at the Repatriation General Hospital. Apparently we are going to see about 55 new geriatric-cum-psychiatric beds built at the Flinders.

The Hon. S.G. Wade: Rehabilitation.

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: General rehabilitation beds. In some of the documents I have read, they actually call them geriatric-psychiatric, but rehabilitation-type beds are going to go in there. Just from the closure of the Repat, we will be at least 200 beds down for a start—for a start. I cannot understand how they are going to make it work. If they were to listen to people like Dr David Pope, who has had the intestinal fortitude to come forward and speak up at these meetings—and I congratulate him because he is a dedicated and experienced emergency surgeon and specialist—if they were to listen to people like Phil Palmer, who heads up the ambulance employees union, they would know that their plan is doomed to failure.

I would like to work as one MP with the government to help it in the way we go about delivering health services into the future, but the government has not engaged the community or the parliament—there is no debate. The agreement that was signed between the federal and state governments back in the mid-1990s—I have had that checked through the federal government health department—this government can slip away with the assets of that property, even though it is commonwealth assets handed over, because it only had to stay there for five years. Unfortunately, there is no legislation that gives us a chance to hold back and try to negotiate a better point.

I never thought I would be in the parliament, working under any government that would close the Repatriation General Hospital. It was the furthest thing from my mind. I never thought a government would go down that track, and now we have one that has and it is wrong. There is a lot more to say about this. There is a lot of business to do today, so I will seek to adjourn my introductory remarks on this motion to the next Wednesday of sitting.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Hon. J.S.L. Dawkins): Are you seeking leave to conclude your remarks at a later time?

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: I am, sir.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

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