Daniel Wills: Labor’s health record looking increasing sick but voters still wait for Liberals to offer a cure ahead of March state election
ALL the pain was supposed to be worth it. Despite opening the new RAH and overhauling the hospital system, Labor’s health credentials remain on life support, State Political Editor Daniel Wills writes.
ALL the pain was supposed to be worth it. Labor has taken a dose of stiff medicine over the past three years across the Health portfolio on the promise that better days were to come.
It slogged through delays with the new Royal Adelaide Hospital and the highly controversial Transforming Health overhaul hoping that it would emerge at the other end with a gleaming world-class facility on North Tce and a broader system that was back on its feet.
But on Tuesday, just a week after the new RAH opened its emergency room, Health Minister Jack Snelling was forced to unveil a crisis plan to deal with a system that seems in chaos.
And the State Government can’t say it wasn’t warned. Well ahead of time, heath unions raised fears that ambulance ramping could still be a major problem and that moving hospitals in the midst of one of the worst flu seasons in recent years increased the risk of mayhem.
Many South Australians have been prepared to cut the Government some slack during a stage of significant transition.
Teething problems were always anticipated. But what has emerged in the past few days hasn’t been a simple struggle to settle into a new home. Across the city, hospitals are swelling to the point that basic systems for handling patients are being rewritten. Health is always a critical issue in state elections.
March next year will be no different.
Historically, it is a major Labor strength. The impact of the Mediscare campaign at the federal election last year highlighted a mainstream suspicion about the Liberals’ commitment to public health and a default expectation that Labor can better be trusted to deliver good hospitals.
But Premier Jay Weatherill can’t count on that public confidence at the ballot box next year.
There is still six months for Labor to rescue its health credentials from intensive care.
Already, it has moved to cauterise Transforming Health and hopes to have new systems running by March.
But changes at the Modbury and Noarlunga hospitals have left deep wounds in key marginal seats. The scenes of yesterday, so soon after the intense focus on the opening of the new RAH, will dash an emerging sense of optimism.
It offers the Liberals a rare opportunity to turn the tables on Labor and take control in a field where they usually lag. Like former premier Mike Rann’s moves to snatch the law and order agenda, Opposition Leader Steven Marshall can now do it in health.
All he needs is a policy that gives the public confidence there is a better way. The Liberals continue to do a fine job diagnosing the sickness, but all anyone wants is a cure.