SA government confident Labor can fix state's worsening ambulance ramping crisis
The SA government says it is confident Labor will be able to keep its promise to fix the state's ambulance ramping crisis, even though ramping hours continue to grow. In the two years since Labor made the key election pledge, the issue has become significantly worse.
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00:00 What happens to a promise after it wins an election?
00:07 Does anyone remember it?
00:09 Does anyone care?
00:11 Remember this?
00:12 Labor promised at the last election to fix the ramping crisis.
00:16 That means stopping ambulances waiting outside hospitals with patients inside.
00:22 The problem is, since Labor took office, ramping has got much worse.
00:27 You remember this?
00:28 Yes.
00:29 What do you think of how it's going?
00:31 It's not going to be fixed in two years.
00:34 It's going to take at least three or four years, and they're working on it.
00:38 That's what politicians do, they'll tell you the right thing at the right time.
00:42 They can't do it, neither could the Liberals.
00:45 I think it's going to be forever, ever ramping.
00:47 I think it's something to stay.
00:49 It's really disappointing, it shows that you can't really have any faith in the parties when they say that they're going to do something.
00:54 They're politicians, they promise the world and deliver nothing.
00:57 I'm Peter Malinowskis.
00:58 At the last state election, voters were told rising ambulance ramping threatened their lives.
01:04 At the coming election, vote Labor, like your life depends on it.
01:07 People were worried when ramping was happening here, then they were really, really worried, but this is complete bedlam.
01:14 But since Labor won office in March 2022, ambulance ramping has increased from around 2,700 hours per month to more than 4,000 hours in March this year,
01:26 and around 3,500 hours in April.
01:30 Ambulances have now spent more time ramped in just two years of Labor government than they did in four years of the Liberals.
01:38 That's despite Labor spending tens of millions of dollars on new ambulance stations, extra crews, more hospital beds and increased staffing.
01:47 We're investing, we're hiring more, we're building more, we're putting more in place.
01:51 We are continuing to make every possible investment that we can.
01:55 We are using a significant amount of state government resources, putting into the system, building those additional beds.
02:04 Ramping is a complex problem caused by failures across both the state and federally administered parts of the health system.
02:13 Some initiatives are helping, such as improvements at specific hospitals like the Lyle McEwen.
02:19 They've been able to improve a number of their processes in the hospital that have helped to turn around their ramping situation,
02:25 such that it's reduced by 45% just in the past six months.
02:30 Paramedics, who ran a prolonged campaign against the Liberal government, are willing to give Labor more time.
02:37 The difference now is that we have a government that acknowledges the situation, where we've come from, where we were at the time,
02:47 and is going to extraordinary lengths in attempts to resolve the situation.
02:57 The opposition is not.
03:00 Ramping is deteriorating at such a dramatic rate that by the next election we'll have more than 6,000 hours wasted on the ramp every month.
03:09 We will have multiple patients dying every week on the ramp.
03:13 I think it'll be a primary focus of the 2026 election, and it'll be a battering ram against Labor's credibility.
03:20 It might not be a very effective one.
03:23 Analysts expect Labor to retain office whether it fixes the ramping crisis or not.
03:29 Labor will, I think, lose some skin from that, but on the other hand he's travelling very well in other regards,
03:35 and certainly will go into the next election as a very strong favorite.
03:39 Which means that voters might mark Labor down for over-promising, but not write them off.
03:46 them off.
03:46 [BLANK_AUDIO]