Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (12:14): I rise to support this motion by the leader:

That this house condemns the Malinauskas government for failing to fix ramping.

The response from the government about this motion here today is interesting because the Malinauskas Labor government has dismally failed to fix ramping. As has already been stated in this house, coming into the last election there were thousands—literally thousands—of corflutes that said that the Malinauskas Labor government, if elected, would fix ramping. What a joke—what a joke!

Now we hear all the spin that we have hired so many doctors, hired so many nurses, opened up so many hospital beds. That is all great, but guess what? It has not fixed ramping—nowhere near it. Ramping is as bad as it has ever been. In fact, it is worse than it has ever been. We have had 41 of the worst months of ramping on record. This does not help people in the city and it does not help people in the country.

We have a government that tries to defend its spending on health and its policies on health. This is the government that shut the Repatriation hospital at Daw Park. It is outrageous, especially in light of the service that that hospital had provided for veterans over decades. They were certain that they could centralise services. It was completely outrageous, and we saw veterans campaigning for many, many months, literally living on the front steps of Parliament House, to turn that around. Thankfully, we turned that around when in government.

Look at these policy positions. Look at EPAS, which turned into Sunrise, which is the electronic patient management system that the Labor government introduced into the system. That system would have cost a billion dollars—a billion dollars—to implement, and it is still being implemented in country hospitals across the state. It is sad that when you go and visit someone in hospital, you wonder why the nurses—no discredit to them—are on an electronic machine out in the corridor for maybe quarter of an hour of every hour, punching information into this recording device that was not particularly designed for working in the health system.

It is just so much money gone down the drain. It is hopeless. Talking about hopeless, look at the money that the government has spent on helipads. Helipads and airstrips for the Royal Flying Doctor Service are vitally important in country areas. There are 13 helipads that have had $23 million spent on them. The government, in the full light of day, knew that there were going to be compliance issues. If they did not, that shows how bad they are, because the compliance issues had been around for a while and they should have known about them.

They built these helipads. They had fences in the wrong place. They upgraded the ones next to hospitals like mine at Mannum and Murray Bridge. They had to lower the fences—and then what? Just in my electorate, there are two of the six helipads out of the 13 that are not operational. I do not know when these helipads will be operational at Mannum and Murray Bridge.

These helipads are situated directly outside the emergency access to the emergency departments at both hospitals and they are vital for not just country people but people who are travelling through, people who are touring, people who are using facilities and touring through the great area of the Murraylands. Whether they are enjoying motor racing down at The Bend, whether they are going out to Monarto Safari Park, or whether they are part of the $500 million economy per year, up and down the River Murray people have accidents. Stuff happens, and it is not just regional people that the failure to have these helipads in place affects.

The truth is that after the government invested this $23 million, for over 12 months—close to 14 months now—we have not seen helicopters land at Mannum or Murray Bridge. My office is in Murray Bridge, and when I am there I know that roughly on average, back in the day, a MedSTAR helicopter would come in about once a day. That has just disappeared. What is the cause and effect of that?

It may be subjective but I have had people say to me, constituents say to me, 'How do we know people haven't died because of the lack of that access?' And how do we know? I know of a baby that had to be stabilised and then taken to Adelaide in a land ambulance where that baby's health would have been so much better if they could have been put in that life-saving helicopter. There are other stories about patients who have not been able to move out to the alternative site from Murray Bridge out to Pallamana, which is at least a 15-minute travel time for the 15 kilometres from the emergency department out to Pallamana Airfield. It is just outrageous.

To top it off, instead of the MedSTAR crews flying out to Murray Bridge in their helicopter, they will come out in land-based ambulances. This is tying up ambulances at each end—but again, no discredit to the workers, the MedSTAR pilots, the paramedics, the nurses and all those who assist with our vital emergency care. It is just not operating as it should for the safety and the survival of people who rely on this vital life-saving service. It is no different to how the Royal Flying Doctor Service got set up because we had to have quick access to medical treatment for people who were, essentially, in a life or death situation. It is just completely outrageous. Now we know due to this poor planning that they are putting up signs at some helipads, I think it is the one at Victor Harbor, about what needs to happen when a helicopter might land.

The Hon. V.A. Tarzia: Stay in your car.

Mr PEDERICK: Yes, 'Stay in your car', is what it says—and then at Murray Bridge they have to buy four houses. At what cost? The department will have to compulsorily acquire four houses, because you know what? They forgot about the compliance issues and they have not admitted to it with downdraft to the helicopters landing, with the new rules and regulations that were coming into place. The stupidity of it is that they have placed the liability on the pilots, and I get it: they do not want to take the liability of landing at a helipad and potentially injuring someone on the ground.

This is where the stupidity comes in. These helicopters, these vital life-saving helicopters, luckily, can still land next to a crashed vehicle on a road or in a paddock next to a road or on an oval, because those areas are exempt from the downdraft issues. This is some of the ridiculousness around the lack of these vital health services, not just in my area but right across country areas in this state.

In regard to the ramping crisis, we were told coming into the last election that people should vote for Labor and that their life depended on it. Look what they have got: they have got hospitals overfull, emergency departments flooded with patients and the ramps clogged up with ambulances. We had Ash the Ambo and her friends chalking ambulances. Where are their thousands of corflutes now? It is completely outrageous.

In October this year, it was revealed that patients and paramedics spent 3,958 hours stuck on the ramp outside hospitals. The latest October data shows patients and paramedics have now spent more than 164,218 hours stuck outside our hospitals on the ramp since Labor was elected, the equivalent of 18 years. For comparison, there were only 75,000 hours lost during the entire four-year term of the former Liberal government.

It was a completely outrageous statement made at the last election by this Peter Malinauskas Labor government, that they would fix ramping 'like your life depends on it'. Well, that has not happened. There are so many other issues out there in the health scene, including the lack of use of helipads' life-saving service in regional areas. It is completely disgusting, and they need to pay at the next election.