Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The South Australian government seems to be living in a fantasy land when it comes to the Daw Park Repatriation General Hospital in my electorate of Boothby. This is a 300-bed local hospital that employs 1,250 staff. The South Australian government is shutting it down, selling the land, vacating the site and walking away.

State Labor are very keen to talk about how the Repat is old, run down and falling apart. Well, over the last decade, the federal government has given South Australia tens of millions of dollars to fund new facilities at the Repat. I have paid several visits there recently. Imagine my surprise when I found myself walking through bright modern buildings filled with some of the best hospital equipment available. The rehab facilities at the Repat are world class. Most recently, the federal government invested $40.3 million to fund 20 brand-new subacute beds at the Repat. They were opened with great fanfare by Jack Snelling only last year. They are state-of-the-art by anybody's measure, and they will now be closed by the state government.

Residents of the southern suburbs do not want to see the Repat close. More than 50,000 people have signed the petition calling on state Labor to keep it open. Forty-four local RSL clubs have signed a letter to the state government calling on them to keep the Repat open. Veterans have been literally camped on the steps of Parliament House for the last five weeks. At my last listening post, I had a 91-year-old war widow make a special trip there, in her wheelchair, to sign the petition.

There is a real concern that the closure of the Repat will also have serious, negative and long-term impacts on the health services for the broader community, particularly for people living in the southern suburbs. Last year, one-quarter of all orthopaedic and urological elective surgery performed in Adelaide was done at the Repat. It plays an important role in performing overflow colonoscopies from Flinders Medical Centre, a critical step in the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program. A senior surgeon has advised that Flinders is already at capacity, and will be unable to cope with the extra burden of ophthalmology, orthopaedic and urology work. As of half an hour ago, Flinders was running at four beds over their normal base capacity, and the Repat was only ten beds under their own base capacity. If you take out the Repat, the system will not cope.

The people of the southern suburbs just want the Repat to stay open; it is as simple as that. I will be out in the community gathering signatures to save the Repat at all of my listening posts. I would also encourage local residents to drop in to my office at 724 Marion Road, Marion, at any time, to sign the petition to save the Repat.

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