The Hon. R.A. SIMMS (17:46): I thank all members for their contributions: the Hon. Dennis Hood, the Hon. Jing Lee, the Hon. Michelle Lensink, the Hon. Connie Bonaros and the Hon. Russell Wortley. I thank crossbenchers and the Liberal opposition for their support of this sensible proposal. It is a modest proposal, but it is something that I think would deliver some tangible benefits for South Australians who are struggling, when every other state is able to provide free emergency ambulance services to people receiving the full age pension—every other state than South Australia.
I want to reflect momentarily on the Hon. Russell Wortley's contribution, which I found extraordinary for many reasons. One of the things I found quite shocking in the Labor Party's talking points that he read from was the suggestion that the Labor Party supports a user-pays model when it comes to accessing an ambulance in our state. We have just come off the back of a federal election campaign where the Prime Minister made much of the need for Medicare to be protected and spent a lot of time brandishing his Medicare card, moving around the country.
Yet now it seems that in the state of South Australia the Malinauskas government is saying that when you turn up at an emergency department you need to bring your credit card with you. I do not think most South Australians will support the idea that accessing an ambulance should be based on your capacity to pay and that a user-pays model is appropriate when it comes to emergency services. I do not think most South Australians will support that.
Let us reflect on some of the costs associated with this. For a single emergency ambulance trip in South Australia an individual will pay $1,171, plus a per kilometre fee of $6.70. This is a charge that exceeds the fortnightly rate of the full age pension. It is bad enough that older South Australians are too scared to call an ambulance because they live in fear that they will be ramped for hours and hours, but now we have South Australians who are too scared to call an ambulance because we know they are going to be slugged with a bill of over $1,000. It is not acceptable, in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, to see the Malinauskas government taking this position. I urge them in tomorrow's budget to send those talking points to the bin and instead show some leadership on this issue.
This is the third budget in a row when the Greens have argued for some action on this. The Council on the Ageing has been steadfast in arguing for this over many, many years. I think it will be a key issue for the Malinauskas government heading into the next state election. This is the last budget they are handing down before the state election and I urge them to show some leadership on this. User-pays is not the South Australian way when it comes to accessing emergency services.