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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2016-09-27 Daily Xml
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Question Time

SA Health Facilities, Accessibility

The Hon. K.L. VINCENT (15:05): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking questions of the minister representing the Minister for Health regarding SA Health facilities and accessible toilets including changing places.

Leave granted.

The Hon. K.L. VINCENT: The Changing Places campaign advocates for fully accessible public toilets with change tables and hoists for people, specifically adults, with disability across Australia, and calls those toilets 'changing places'. To date, we have zero toilets meeting these specifications in South Australia, although Adelaide City Council has a change room with a hoist and accessible toilet at the Adelaide Aquatic Centre and is working on other locations to install a certified changing place here in the city.

Meanwhile, Victoria has dozens of these toilets, as I understand it, and despite spending $600 million on Adelaide Oval, we are sad to say that we don't have a changing place there, nor is there one at the Adelaide Convention Centre. There is a changing place in Darwin, but not here in Adelaide.

It has come to my attention that the new Royal Adelaide Hospital—or NRAH, as it has become affectionately known (or not so affectionately, depending on who you are)—a brand-new health facility, contains zero toilets that meet Changing Places guidelines for high-level accessibility. In fact, there is a dearth of disability accessibility in general, including limited access or facilities for assistance animals as well. My questions to the minister are:

1. Why are there no certified changing places toilets in the new Royal Adelaide Hospital?

2. If the NRAH is a world-class facility, why are there no changing places?

3. What consultation of the disability community and/or people with additional access needs and/or access consultants has occurred in the construction of the NRAH?

4. Why does the NRAH not contain facilities for assistance animals that may be at the hospital with inpatients, outpatients or visitors?

5. Are there any plans for changing places at other SA Health facilities, particularly those with rehabilitation facilities such as spinal cord injury units, and will those facilities be available to outpatients, inpatients and visitors?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (15:08): I thank the honourable member for her most important questions and undertake to refer those questions to the Minister for Health in the other place and seek a response on her behalf.

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