Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-06-20 Daily Xml

Contents

Savings Targets

The Hon. I. PNEVMATIKOS (15:02): Supplementary question arising from the original answer: will the Treasurer confirm that all savings that SA Health achieves will be rolled back into SA Health?

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (15:03): My hardworking and excellent colleague the Minister for Health has already put that on the public record. It was on the public record prior to the election. The additional savings requirements of the Liberal government, which is what the policy costing document indicated, will be rolled back in the fashion to which the honourable member has referred, but bearing in mind that there were continuing Labor savings tasks, some of which were imposed as late as just before Christmas in the Mid-Year Budget Review, which will still need to be implemented by the minister and indeed his other colleagues in terms of the savings tasks that they have had.

So the policy costing document commitment we made was quite explicit. Any additional savings task imposed by the incoming Liberal government in the health area will be quarantined and rolled back into health and health related programs, but there is and continues to be a not insignificant savings task that the former Labor government left the health portfolio, and that will be an ongoing task for the incoming minister.