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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-09-05 Daily Xml
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SA Pathology

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE (15:17): I want to reconfirm that, because on 31 May the minister referred to SA Pathology by saying:

…now the government, gave a commitment before the election that we would not implement the staff reductions…

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (15:18): I suspect I am being verballed. What I do recall—and I'm happy to check the record—

The Hon. K.J. Maher: I've got it here; that's exactly what you said—you're not being verballed.

The PRESIDENT: Leader of the Opposition, don't cut across one of your own member's questioning.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: My recollection of the public commitments we gave—sorry, they may not have been public, they may have been direct to Professionals Australia—but my understanding of the clear commitments we made before the election is that we would not implement any job reductions in the calendar year of 2018. In terms of the efficiency improvement program (and the honourable member stimulates me to go back to what Labor did in opposition), as I said, they had their own review—they've done an Ernst and Young review. They didn't actually drop it: what they said on 8 August 2017 was that they were going to suspend it.

So we had this hanging over our heads right through to the next election, and what we have after the election is an opposition that had put forward funding cuts well above what the state budget yesterday presented. The opposition members who are opposing efficiencies, apparently, in public services have to explain to the people of South Australia: if they were determined not to pursue efficiencies in the public services, how were they going to achieve hundreds of million dollars more of cuts in health? It's a hypocritical opposition that criticises, in opposition, what they were pursuing in government.

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