Mr Ellis to move – That this House –  

(a) recognises the dire impact that the unfortunate reduction of health services in  

Ardrossan will have on the town and surrounding community;  

(b) congratulates the hard-working staff and volunteer board on their perseverance  

in keeping the community hospital as long as they have;  

(c) note that this comes as part of a wider degradation in regional health services;  

and  

(d) implores the State Government to do all that they can to address the reduction  

of health services in regional South Australia, including but not limited to:  

i. installing a triage service in Ardrossan imitation the template provided after 

the closure of the Keith and Districts Community Hospital;  

ii. committing to a significant upgrade of the woefully undersized Wallaroo 

Hospital; and  

iii. guaranteeing the equitable distribution of health professionals across the  

entirety of the State. 

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (12:25): I rise to support this motion by the member for Narungga in supporting not just healthcare needs on the Yorke Peninsula but across broader South Australia and certainly, in particular, in my seat of Hammond and surrounding areas. Some areas of Hammond have interchanged over time, and at the moment the Mallee areas of Lameroo, Pinnaroo and Karoonda have all gone into different seats–Lameroo and Pinnaroo into MacKillop and Karoonda into Chaffey. They have certainly had their different challenges over time in attracting health professionals. I have seen, sadly, a bit of racism over international doctors coming to one location years ago, and that was a tragedy in itself because that community then lost their doctor.

Certainly, everyone deserves decent health care across this state. In the bigger scheme of things I would like to thank the volunteer ambulance service personnel around the state for what they do in supporting the paid paramedics to get the healthcare helicopters out and, for those further afield and further-flung hospitals, the Royal Flying Doctor Service for the work they do in looking after not just country South Australians but those who need those services out in the bush.

Country health is a challenging space, and sadly we see too much money just burnt up in health. We see the state Labor government pouring billions and billions of dollars into health as they try to fix the ramping crisis that they said they would fix at the last election, which they will not fix, by the way. They will just pour in billions and billions of dollars, and it just keeps getting thrown at essentially a festering wound.

We have seen the most expensive building in the world built here in Adelaide—the new Royal Adelaide Hospital. Before it was built, it was always going to be too small. Yet when we saw the new Angas Street hospital built, the new Calvary, that hospital was built for a third of the bed price of the Royal Adelaide Hospital. Why did that happen? It was because it was built in the private sector. Commercial & General built it. Jamie McClurg and his team do a great thing, and thankfully he is the builder doing great work in North Adelaide, finally building some towers after decades of maladministration in regard to that land, but that is another story. You just have to question where the wastage comes from.

Certainly, over time, living at Coomandook—and I have said this before—we have had emergency services at Tailem Bend. I believe they are not there anymore, but it was a great service to have, whether you drove in or needed an ambulance to come. You would ring up and get the doctor to come in to make sure that a doctor was there. We have similar triage arrangements at the Murray Bridge emergency department now, where doctors are on call. This happens in most sites across South Australia, because they are contracted out. Murray Bridge is contracted out to Bridge Clinic, which does a magnificent job, alongside the other two clinics that are based in Murray Bridge.

I have written to the other two clinics about getting more support for Bridge Clinic, which is happy to cooperate with the other two clinics to attract more doctors to assist with the emergency management at that hospital. That has not been forthcoming. Bridge Clinic get criticised for having a so-called monopoly, but they want the support and they need the support to carry on, and they do a great job. Certainly, since the new emergency department was built, with my urging through my team and under the Marshall Liberal government, it has been a great boon for our area. But as the population expands, we are going to need a massive upgrade in health services in the Murray Bridge area. Certainly, with a tripling of the population over the next 40 years it has to be front and centre of governments going into the next few decades.

Emergency departments are quite vital but they get abused to a degree—that might be too strong a word—but during COVID we saw 70 per cent of people stop attending emergency departments, like the one at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, because people were actually scared to go into emergency departments because they thought they would catch COVID. That means—and I do not think the number has changed, and I am happy for someone to tell me if it has—that 70 per cent of people attending an emergency department do not need to be there.

The problem we have, though, is that people are having trouble getting into general practitioners (GPs) and so that is their option. What happens in most country hospitals with emergency department access is that there is a gap fee if you do not get admitted. It is usually not very large but it does impact people, and I get that—we certainly get the references that come to my office for that kind of thing—but guess what? The way that works is that it literally keeps people out of emergency departments who do not need to be there.

That gap fee is variable, and I get that. People think we should have free health care—well, nothing is free in the world. I just mentioned before about the many billions of dollars getting poured into SA Health and we still get the same outcome. It just does not work. I think it would be too simplistic, to a degree, but I certainly believe that ramping could be fixed without—and here I am trying to help the Malinauskas Labor government—

An honourable member interjecting:

Mr PEDERICK: Trying to help all South Australians. I think it could be fixed without spending a single dollar on any infrastructure. I do not think the public would stand it, mind you, but if there was a gap fee for people turning up to emergency who did not get admitted, I think you would see a drastic reduction in people attending emergency departments. I do not think it would be something politically saleable for probably anyone, but the reality is that there are billions and billions of dollars being forged into SA Health and it takes 30 per cent of the state's budget, but where are we going?

There is more infrastructure being built, more people not being able to access general practitioners, and more people being ramped for over 100,000 hours, I think, since Labor came into office. The simple fact is that we need more support at our regional hospitals because that will keep regional people out of Adelaide as much as possible, notwithstanding the fact that 30 per cent of patients in Adelaide hospitals are country people; 30 per cent of patients can be up here for elective surgery, emergency needs and that kind of thing.

We need more support in the regions, which are vital to this state's economy, whether it is in the farming sector, the mining sector, or whether it is in all industries across the board, the value-add sector as we have in my area with the food processing industries. We need to have those support services close to home so that we do not have to be rushing off and clogging up a system that is already clogged beyond control.

Where I think the billions of dollars should be invested is in local health services, whether they be on Yorke Peninsula at Ardrossan or Wallaroo or over on the West Coast at Port Lincoln and surrounding areas, and certainly in my area, whether that be at Murray Bridge, which obviously will need an expanded service and a new hospital over time, Mannum or Strathalbyn, which does not have a functioning emergency department at the moment and certainly needs an upgraded service there for a community that is expanding. If you do not class that as regional then look up the road at Mount Barker: they are having a few hundred million invested there for a new hospital over time.

I think it would be a lot smarter investing billions of dollars into country health services right across the state than what I see as some of the waste going into a project that is not fixing the problem that the Malinauskas Labor government said they would fix, and that is ramping.