Treasurer Stephen Mullighan reveals an extra $2.3bn will be ploughed into health system in Thursday’s state budget

As Treasurer Stephen Mullighan prepares to deliver his second budget, we summarise what’s already been announced across health, road safety, urban works, police and more.

An extra $2.3bn will be ploughed into the health system in Thursday’s state budget as Treasurer Stephen Mullighan leaves open the prospect of yet more spending to meet promises to bring down ambulance response times.

In a pre-budget interview with The Advertiser, Mr Mullighan said the funding would tackle increased demand on the hospital network.

He argued Labor was not having to cough up for an overambitious health agenda at last year’s state election.

But opposition treasury spokesman Matt Cowdrey accused his rival of obliterating the budget surplus, insisting this proves that “same old Labor” could not be “trusted to manage the state’s finances”.

The announcement will mean the government has injected a total $4.4bn extra operating funding into the health care system over the next five years when compared to the Liberals’ last budget update.

This year alone, SA Health’s operating expenditure has increased from $7.26bn to nearly $8.5bn. Next year’s has been revised up from $7.33bn to $8.28bn.

Over the coming years, the boost can be broken down into three main areas of expenditure — additional hospital activity, measures to reduce ramping and the transition from pandemic response to “living with COVID”.

Stephen Mullighan at home with family Ben 8, Isaac, 5, Olivia, 2, and wife Antonia ahead of this week’s state budget. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt

STATE BUDGET ’23 WHAT WE KNOW SO FAR

■ An extra $2.3bn in health funding over five years, focused on additional hospital capacity, reducing ramping and “Living with Covid Framework”

■ An almost $500m reversal of the state’s finances – with the budget to go from the $233m surplus for 2022-23 forecast in last June’s budget to a $249m deficit

■ More than $130m for virtual health care services

■ $98m road safety package

■ $67.5m to tackle hospital bed block

■ Extra $55m for Adelaide Aquatic Centre upgrade

■ $20m for an upgrade to the Women’s and Children’s Hospital Paediatric Intensive Care Unit

■ $20m in new funding to upgrade and repair school infrastructure

■ $12m for SA Police recruitment

■ $5.4m to establish an Office for AUKUS

■ $2m for two new hospital avoidance hubs

■ An extension of the $100-per-child fee discount for the parents of public school students

■ Free breakfast program expanded to provide 1.4 million meals to children over the next four years

Mr Mullighan said the transition funding “recognises that we’re going to need to continue resources for Covid for a much longer period”.

Asked whether this extra money was the price the government must pay to keep its election promises, Mr Mullighan said “no, it’s more than that”.

He said Labor’s health election commitments had been included in the previous budget, including funding for more hospital beds, paramedics, doctors and nurses.

“So this (new funding) is sort of on top of our election commitments,” he said.

“We committed those expenditures as election commitments because we thought that they were going to have, you know, a very positive impact on access to hospitals and the health system generally. And we absolutely think that that is still the case.

“But I think what we’ve now had to decide to decide, as a government, that, in addition to those election commitments, the health system needs another step up in resourcing on top, and that’s really why health remains a major focus.”

Treasurer Stephen Mullighan in parliamentary question time on Wednesday. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Brenton Edwards

An almost $500m reversal of the state’s finances, to be included in the budget, was revealed on Wednesday.

Rather than the $233m surplus for 2022-23 he trumpeted in his debut budget last June, Mr Mullighan will instead announce a net operating shortfall of $249m.

He will unveil a forecast return to surplus in 2023-24 – but on Thursday would not rule out further health spending.

“If further pressures emerge, I think the community is going to expect us to continue responding,” he said.

“We think this step-change investment in health is going to make a difference and hopefully this will be a key contributor to us meeting our election commitment to address response times and improve people's access to the health system by the time of the next election.”

Mr Cowdrey said Labor’s expenditure into health had so far failed to pay off.

“The Labor Party has delivered record ramping and resorted to trying to switch out the target metric – such is their confidence in themselves that they will fix the ramping crisis” he told parliament.

Opposition health spokeswoman Ashton Hurn questioned whether Labor would break its pledge not to introduce any new taxes by imposing payroll tax on some GPs because of a precedent set by a NSW court ruling.

“An additional tax burden like this would be a huge blow to local GP clinics – there are doctors saying it could lead to a huge decrease in bulk billing or event clinics having to close their doors,” she said.