Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health. Minister, can you update the House on the action the Turnbull government is taking to invest in the health of South Australians, particularly within my electorate of Barker? Are you aware of any alternative approaches that will undermine patient outcomes across South Australia?

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Barker, who has been a passionate advocate for mental health services within his electorate of Barker and, in particular, in towns that have a real need for greater support. We're delivering $30 million over the next two years in mental health and suicide prevention support in rural and regional South Australia, in particular in his electorate as well as in the electorate of Grey. We're also delivering just over $6 million in local drug and alcohol team support within rural and regional South Australia over the coming years, and he and others have been great advocates for that.

Interestingly, what we've seen since this government came to power is an increase in Country Health SA's hospital allocation from the Commonwealth of 31½ per cent. What we've seen from the South Australian Labor government over that same period is an increase of approximately half—of 16 per cent. So we have delivered double the hospital funding increases over the same period as the Labor Party in South Australia. They have short-changed their own state. Even more significantly, however, we've heard over the previous days that the South Australian government could not keep the lights on in Flinders Medical Centre, with catastrophic outcomes, and they could not keep the lights on in the Royal Adelaide Hospital. In country South Australia, in towns such as Mount Gambier, Meningie and Penola, what we have seen is that they also deliberately turned out the lights on their own hospitals. They shed load on South Australian rural hospitals under a South Australian government policy. This was initially denied by Tom Koutsantonis, who said they would provide continuous supply to critical infrastructure such as hospitals, only to be contradicted by the South Australian health department, which said, 'This doesn't actually apply to country hospitals.'

We regard country hospitals as critical. We regard country hospitals in South Australia and Victoria and in every state as fundamental to health supply. But that's obviously not so for the government in South Australia. They deliberately shed load on their own rural hospitals. They failed to keep the lights on at the Flinders Medical Centre. They failed to keep the lights on and the surgery operating in Royal Adelaide Hospital. What sort of government are they running there? They are running a failed government with a failed experiment which has failed the people of South Australia. By comparison, we've seen double the funding in rural South Australia in terms of increases from us compared with SA Labor. In the end, this mob over here are covering up for the failure of their state counterparts. We're fixing it up and we're keeping the lights on. (Time expired)