Your views: on new hospital legislation and more
Today, readers comment on parliament’s move on the city’s green belt, the evolution of a health crisis and a power puzzle.
Commenting on Your views: on the new hospital debate
I doubt whether many South Australians comprehend how extraordinary is the New Women’s and Children’s Hospital Bill 2022, recently passed without amendment in the Legislative Council.
It contains a highly disturbing clause that Adelaide park lands’ legal historians have never seen in the state’s history. Section 10 (1) allows a minister to “… vest a prescribed area within the Adelaide Park Lands …” for the purposes of a new police barracks.
The truly revolutionary aspect is that it will allow the minister to grab any section (or sections!) of the park lands, and any amount of dirt, and build anything he likes on it. Such unlimited opportunity has never been endorsed by parliament before.
No wonder Labor rushed this Bill through, well knowing that this clause was a ‘try on’. It would never have been agreed to except and unless three MLCs were so indifferent, or so uncomprehending, of the enormity of the bluff. The police minister must be astonished at his good fortune.
You might like
But for the people of SA, it will prove to be future permanent blot on the existing open-space integrity of Park 6 of the east park lands, the likely site. Labor’s appalling track record endures. – John Bridgland
Commenting on the story: Sick of waiting: More SA patients leave EDs without treatment
We were one of those that left. In September my husband had a hip operation and the night he was discharged his foot and leg became swollen.
Health Direct told us my husband needed to see a doctor within two hours. We’re from the country so Flinders hospital was advised. We booked in at approximately 10.45 pm. Our only contact was with a nurse at 3 am when I enquired “how much longer?” and at 6 am we walked out, reasoning that if anything medically untoward was to happen we could get help elsewhere.
Stay informed, daily
A lot could be done to improve the situation in the waiting area, particularly given that most of the patients were elderly. Most of the chairs are molded plastic and uncomfortable. The water fountain was working but there were no cups, and the only option was a vending machine for bottled water, soft drink and chips.
It would also be helpful if staff could let waiting patients know they might be in the queue but that they haven’t been forgotten. A very bad experience, but we’ve heard a lot worse with tragic consequences since. – Nanette Arnold
Commenting on the story: SA records nation’s highest rate of mental health ED presentations
The Labor government of John Bannon was responsible for this mess. The buzz words in 1993-94 were, “Let’s mainstream mental health”. The move was political, economic and fanciful, a great social idea, a move to destigmatise mental health.
But EDs are not the place to try out social experiments, nor are the lives of the mentally unwell. Hillcrest Hospital was sold off for a pittance. Both the state’s psychiatric hospitals were ageing and the yearly cost of running both would have eaten into the health budget of the time, but rather than build a new state of the art psychiatric hospital, the Bannon government chose to push ahead with deinstitutionalisation and mainstreaming.
Fast forward to 2022. What a mess we have with health services in general and another Labor blunder, Transforming Health. Add in mainstreaming mental health to busy, noisy, bright EDs and the state now has the mess it has with health and mental health in particular.
Any person with a reasonable intellect could tell you an ED is not the place for a mentally unwell individual. The government of 1993- 4 were told this by most of the clinical experts of the day, but governments know better. Patients with mental health issues now sit in EDs for days waiting for beds, due to the overall reduction in acute psychiatric and psychiatric intensive care beds. This adds to the ramping issues.
Both sides of politics have wasted years neglecting health and mental health. Now the public of SA are paying the price. – James Baker
Commenting on the opinion piece: Power price hikes’ short-term pain for long-term gain
I am struggling to understand Dr Susan Stone’s contention that “bringing renewables online with adequate storage capacity will help alleviate both the pressure on household and business budgets”, when the apparent upshot of SA’s electricity mix shifting from below 1% renewables to over 60% wind and solar is the highest power prices in the national electricity market. https://www.canstarblue.com.au/electricity/electricity-costs-kwh/.
That continuing to stack on renewables will result in ‘alleviating pressure on budgets’ appears to be a completely unexamined assumption. It is an article of faith, at odds with the ongoing demonstration that simply comparing so-called levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) for different generators is misleading. There is far more to energy system costs. – Mark Duffett
Want to see more stories from InDaily SA in your Google search results?
- Click here to set InDaily SA as a preferred source.
- Tick the box next to "InDaily SA". That's it.
