Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise with really good news today. We have quite a milestone in my community. Our emergency department at Mount Barker opens next week. On Friday I had a tour with the SA health minister, Chris Picton, to look at the fantastic new emergency department. It will have up to 17 bays—12 more than the old ED.

There's a bit of history with this. When I was first elected here my predecessor told me that it would be impossible for us to have an emergency department in Mount Barker and it would be impossible for us to have doctors overnight. My babies were born there, as were the babies of many people across the region. But there were no doctors for an emergency department. If you had a sick child with a high fever at 2 o'clock in the morning, your only choice was to bundle them into the car and drive north of 50 kilometres to get them to a hospital. I went to the then South Australian health minister, Jack Snelling, and said, 'We need to get some sort of service.' We got a 24-hour doctor system. Then we had a small emergency department.

I thank the previous government for contributing a significant amount of money in order to get this happening. The previous government committed over $11 million to the Mount Barker facility. I also mention that we haven't forgotten the south coast either. More than $13 million of federal funding has been committed to the south coast hospital at Victor Harbor. That is in the process of being upgraded too.

Health is the most important public policy area. It's the one that affects people the most. Now my community in the whole of the Adelaide Hills region will be able to take their sick children at two in the morning and know that there are dedicated paediatric beds. There's even a specialist bed if somebody has an infectious disease. We never had any of these services. It has been such an honour and privilege over the last seven years to fight for that funding for our community and then to see that realised.

I thank everybody who has been involved. The health ministers are no longer in those places and the governments have changed hands, but the commitment has continued no matter who has been in government at the state level or the federal level. Health is critical. If you don't have your health, you don't have anything. I look forward to the upgrades at Victor Harbor as well. We need to make sure that, when people have an emergency and need to have their health addressed, they can do that locally, because local is what's best.