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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-03-03 Daily Xml
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Coronavirus

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE (14:39): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Minister for Health and Wellbeing.

Leave granted.

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE: The Minister for Health and Wellbeing has today highlighted the tireless testing regime being undertaken by SA Pathology. My question to the minister is: what will the minister do to protect SA Pathology from the threat of privatisation while it fights on the front line to protect the public from the coronavirus pandemic?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:39): This is like a conga line of shameless people. They want me to highlight to the people of South Australia and this chamber the gall of their political games in recent days. We have had Labor members of parliamentary committees, of a number of parliamentary committees—

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: Point of order: the minister was asked a very direct question. It is a question of relevance. He has gone off on a tangent, where he is not even addressing the question that was asked of him.

The PRESIDENT: The Hon. Mr Hunter, it's not a point of order. As you know better than most, the minister is entitled to answer the question as he sees fit. The honourable Minister for Health and Wellbeing.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: Thank you, Mr President. As you could tell, I haven't even got to my introduction. Labor's scare campaign in relation to SA Pathology and coronavirus is absolutely shameless. Labor had an opportunity to hear from the Chief Public Health Officer at the very first committee meeting this year, and they gagged her; they did not let her speak. She was in the gallery for an hour. She did not get the opportunity to respond. Last week, they chose to ask questions of a clinical nature to a business manager and then use political campaigns to undermine public trust in the very clinicians who are working tirelessly to protect us.

In terms of the honourable member's suggestion that the reform process in SA Pathology has weakened its capacity to respond to coronavirus, that is patently untrue. In terms of SA Pathology's general business, not only have performance treatment times and the like—key performance indicators—been maintained, in some cases they have been improved.

Then, when the coronavirus comes, rather than being an enfeebled organisation that couldn't rise to the challenge, what do we see? The domiciliary care nurse service I have already talked about being rolled out within weeks of the virus being detected in South Australia. Then, we had the panel. They worked with the Victorian pathology services to make sure they had the capacity to provide testing and then they introduced a proactive screening of tests of people who have viral conditions.

That does not sound to me to be the actions of a weak, enfeebled public sector authority. That to me is an organisation that has not only risen to the challenge of reform as laid down by this government but, much more importantly, has responded to the public safety needs of the people of South Australia in an innovative, forward-learning way.

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