Nicolle Flint (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health. Will the minister update the House on the Turnbull government's record investment in South Australia's hospitals? Is the minister aware of any alternative approaches that will weaken the South Australian healthcare system?

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

I thank the member for Boothby, who has been a great champion, not only for South Australia's hospitals but also for women's health in South Australia and around the country. She has led the push for a national plan, the first national plan, on endometriosis—along with the member for Forrest and, to give credit, the member for Canberra on the other side—and has also argued for stronger Commonwealth funding compared with what has occurred with state funding in South Australia for their hospitals. As a consequence, we have out-increased South Australia by four to one during our time in government, compared with what they have spent. We have increased Commonwealth funding to South Australia by 26 per cent as opposed to an increase of six per cent in South Australia's funding under SA Labor to South Australia's own hospitals. That is the sign of a government which is a hospital fraud and a 'medifraud'. What we have seen there in particular is that in the last full financial year they decreased hospital funding by $7 million. As a consequence of this and their electricity policies, there are real threats to South Australia's hospitals. We've seen that Flinders Medical Centre suffered a blackout. We've seen that the Royal Adelaide Hospital couldn't keep the lights on. We've seen that, in hospitals in Mount Gambier and elsewhere within regional South Australia, the lights were off, and that the Royal Adelaide Hospital was not only $640 million over budget but was 17 months late.

What we've now seen, though, is that the patient care and patient treatment which is occurring includes some catastrophic failures. Only yesterday, the Adelaide Advertiser reported: 'SA Health apologises for making man wait at Royal Adelaide Hospital five days for emergency cheekbone surgery'. Indeed, the gentleman in question had to wait for emergency facial surgery, after an increase in demand, for five days. He was told he would be rushed in for surgery on Thursday but did not go under the knife until Tuesday evening. As a consequence, the gentleman told the Advertiser that he had lodged a complaint on Monday, and, three hours after he told the hospital that he had discussed his case with the Advertiser, finally they treated him. So they didn't respond to his pain; they didn't respond to the fact that he'd been forced to fast not for one or two or three or four days but for five days; they only responded to the fact that it was now about to make the media. So what we see is a South Australian government and Labor Party which are absolutely emblematic of that side's approach to health. They don't care about patients. They don't deliver for patients. They don't care about the outcomes. All they care about is the media. (Time expired)