Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-09-09 Daily Xml

Contents

Ambulance Services

The Hon. J.E. HANSON (15:14): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Minister for Health and Wellbeing regarding ambulances.

Leave granted.

The Hon. J.E. HANSON: On 3 September, The Advertiser quoted SA Ambulance Service Chief Executive, David Place, in response to its industrial dispute with paramedics, as saying the following: 'the government is not averse to providing more resources, but they want industrial reform, and we are caught in the middle.' My questions to the minister are:

1. Why is the government withholding critical resources from the Ambulance Service as a negotiation tactic?

2. If the government is not withholding resources from our paramedics as an industrial ploy, then what is the reason they are doing it?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (15:15): To a certain extent, the honourable member may be asking a question of the Minister for Industrial Relations, who I am not. All I can say is that clearly the government is not averse to investing resources in the Ambulance Service. Since we have been elected, we have invested $1.8 billion more in health services, we have boosted the SAAS workforce and, shall we say, most pertinently, only in the last couple of months we have renewed the ambulance fleet with 46 new vehicles. We are investing resources in the Ambulance Service and we will continue to do so.