Malinauskas’ ramping pledge could take down two governments in a row | David Penberthy

The Malinauskas government’s ramping election pledge is starting to look like one of the biggest broken promises SA has ever seen, writes David Penberthy.

“Vote like your life depends on it.” So went the dire warning barely 18 months ago from ‘Ash the Ambo’ as South Australians went to the polls.

The ramping crisis was so bad under Steven Marshall that the removal of his government had become a genuine life and death issue.

The government had to be turfed, or people would be hurt or even killed as a result of his ineptitude.

The Marshall government was duly dismissed.

I am not sure where Ash the Ambo from that memorable Labor election advertisement is today.

Maybe she has left the state out of fear for her safety.

I mean, she was pretty worked up about the state of ramping when Steven Marshall was in power, so she must be absolutely terrified now.

Excuse this generous serving of cynicism. But it is cynicism which is invited.

As we approach the halfway mark of the first term of the Malinauskas government, its record so far on delivering its key promise of driving down ramping stands as one of the greatest broken promises this state has ever seen.

Twitter post of paramedic Ashleigh Frier, who appeared in Labor Party, campaign material.

CFMEU lawyer Peter Russell campaigning with Ash the Ambo during the 2022 SA election. Source: Facebook

Now I get that all this takes time.

The government argues – rightly – that there are so many factors at play ranging from Covid to GP shortages to the inherently gradual and laborious process of creating more beds, hiring more doctors and nurses, that none of this was going to happen overnight.

Herein lies the problem in a political sense.

The chasm between the snappiness of a campaign promise, made long and loud while in opposition in reductive election poster form, versus the more complex and demanding realities of actually running the show.

The 2022 ramping promise might end up getting studied in politics for years to come.

As silly as it might sound given the electoral Everest facing the SA Liberals, with the loss of key seats to conservative independents, Mali’s ramping promise might prove to have been so big that it ultimately destroys not one government but two.

It is interesting to hear the Premier discuss his ramping pledge today.

Malinauskas is one of the most impressive politicians in the land for two key reasons.

He sounds like he is trying to be honest and sincere, and he sounds like he has command of his brief.

Not so when he is forced to discuss ramping.

It’s not that he sounds dishonest, but he does sound painfully defensive, his every utterance on the continuing, worsening ramping crisis beginning with a lengthy reminder as to the exact nature of his promise.

He wants us to recall that the promise was never to “end” ramping, or even to “fix” ramping in isolation, but “to fix the ramping crisis”. By which he means to get it back to the same levels as when Steven Marshall came to power in 2018.

Righty-oh.

One key problem with this nuanced parsing of his pre-election position is that it jars with the hey-presto vibe of the election campaign, the city covered with posters, endless press conferences suggesting Malinauskas and Chris Picton would pretty much arrive like Batman and Robin and sort this out overnight.

They offered few caveats on their pledge, made scant reference (any reference?) to the length of time required to achieve the turnaround.

Voting for Labor was billed as the ultimate queue-busting panacea, the surest path out of the back of an ambulance into a nice warm hospital bed.

The bigger problem is this.

The one thing Peter Malinauskas definitely did not say was that ramping would rise under Labor on multiple occasions to records never seen during the life of the Marshall government.

And that near the halfway mark of his first term, ramping would stand at the highest level ever recorded in the history of South Australia.

Missed it? Only by this much.

The promise as stated should be reworked.

Rather than “Labor will fix the ramping crisis”, it should read: “Labor will make ramping the worst it has ever been before getting it back to 2018 levels at some stage late in its first four-year term.” Not as snappy a slogan I guess, not one which would win you an election, and probably a fair explanation as to why I’m not a campaign advisor.

The other added complication for Labor right now are the bombshell claims by the Salaried Medical Officers Association’s Dr David Pope that marginally unwell people are being bundled out of ambulances ahead of more gravely ill people inside EDs to reduce the politically poor optics of huge ramping numbers.

It is important to note that these claims have been denied with force by SA Health.

The challenge for the government though is that Pope is a guy with no history of histrionics or rabble-rousing and has made the claims in a matter-of-fact way, suggesting that even if there isn’t some shameful directive urging ambulance patients to jump the triage queue, things are so frazzled inside our hospitals that staff are feeling pressured to do so anyway.

So all up, it’s not going very well.

And again, as this is a column about the politics of it all, it’s worth reflecting on the difference between Ash the Ambo in breathless pre-election mode, versus the more sober-minded realities of government.

In the space of 18 months we’ve gone from “vote like your life depends on it” to Rome wasn’t built in a day, none of this is easy, be patient, and if you’ve got any smart ideas as to how we could do it faster we are all ears, thank you.

So it goes in the opportunistic world of politics.

The lure of improbable victory after just one term in the wilderness means you will promise the world, then work out how the hell you’re going to deliver.