Health Minister Chris Picton says Labor government never committed to any target in reduction in ambulance ramping hours

The state government says it never committed to any target of reduction in ramping hours, despite its election pledge to “fix the ramping crisis”.

The state government says it never committed to any target of reduction in ambulance ramping hours, despite its election pledge to “fix the ramping crisis”.

Health Minister Chris Picton said the commitment has always been in reference to improving ambulance response times.

“We are saying exactly the same today as we did before the election,” he said.

“We were clear during the election our plan to fix the ramping crisis which we clearly said was bringing ramping down so ambulances can respond to cases as they did back in 2018.

“Before the election Peter Malinauskas was repeatedly asked what was meant by ‘fix the ramping crisis’ and was clear that it meant reducing ramping to the point that we can ensure ambulances respond to priority cases as they did back in 2018.”

One of Labor’s election posters.

The government has no target for reduction in the number of hours ambulances spend ramped outside hospitals, Mr Picton said.

However, Mr Malinauskas and and the head of SA Health and have previously linked ramping reduction to 2018 levels.

“The commitment that I made and deserve to be held to account over was to get ramping back down to 2018 levels and the objective there is so that we can start having ambulances roll up on time,” Mr Malinauskas told FIVEaa in December.

He went on to outline ambulance response times under the Liberal government, and added “but we’ve got a long way to go before we can get back to that 2018 level, which is our target”.

Opposition health spokeswoman Ashton Hurn accused the government of using “low and tricky weasel words that South Australians loathe”.

“South Australians know what Peter Malinauskas promised — a clear guarantee to fix ramping — and Labor campaigned on it day after day after day,” she said.

Mrs Hurn said Labor was attempting to introduce a new metric after presiding over the worst 10 months of ramping in South Australian history.

Chris Picton says the pledge to “fix the ramping crisis” never meant to reduce ramping hours. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Naomi Jellicoe

But Mr Picton said the two metrics — ramping hours and ambulance response times — were “absolutely intricately linked”.

In February 2022, Mr Malinauskas vowed to “fix the ramping crisis”.

“Today, I start announcing our plan to fix the ramping crisis,” he said at the time, while promising 300 new hospital beds, 100 new doctors and – just a few days later – a new SA Ambulance HQ, if elected.

“This is a serious, costed plan,” he said at the time.

Opposition leader Peter Malinauskas announces the recruitment of 30 additional paramedics and a new station for Mount Barker. Picture: Mark Brake

He spoke about improving ambulance response times on multiple occasions during the campaign.

In March last year, the month Labor won government, ambulances spent about 2710 hours ramped.

Ramping then peaked in June last year, when ambulances spent 3840 hours ramped — but the figure had dropped to 3040 by last month, according to SA Health data.

In a parliamentary committee last year, SA Health chief executive Robyn Lawrence was asked whether the government had advised what level of ambulance ramping is acceptable.

“They have been very clear that ambulance ramping is their number one priority to improve,” she said.

“My understanding was the commitment was to return ambulance ramping to 2018 levels.”

Dr Lawrence repeated the claim in a separate hearing last week.

“We have an ongoing piece of work to improve the ramping situation,” she said.

“Certainly the initial target as we move forward is to reach the levels that we saw back in 2018, and I think we would all like to see ramping minimised even beyond that.”

On Sunday, Deputy Premier Susan Close was asked: “The promise was that you would return ramping levels to pre-2018 by the end of your term, do you still think that’s achievable?”

She responded: “We are certainly doing everything we can to deliver on that commitment”.