The Liberals have been caught out once again lying about our ambulance service and must now apologise to our hard-working ambos.
Liberal Leader David Speirs and his health spokesperson Ashton Hurn gave blatantly wrong information while attacking the SA Ambulance Service in a press conference and media release yesterday.
The Liberals made no attempt to fact-check their lies before spreading the misinformation.
They issued a press release falsely claiming that last February was one of Noarlunga Hospital’s worst months of ramping on record, citing 463 hours lost.
They were completely wrong.
It was only 55 hours – eight times less than the Liberals’ lie.
They also failed to do any fact-checking or due diligence before claiming that almost a year ago a patient had waited for an hour for an ambulance before deciding to drive to hospital.
A fact-check by SA Ambulance Service revealed that it was only 22 minutes between those Triple Zero phone calls a year ago.
This information would have been provided to the Liberals had they checked. The case was triaged as Priority 3, which has a target response time of 30 minutes.
The Liberals never raised the statistics or the year-old case with the Minister, the Government or SA Ambulance Service before holding their press conference.
Any South Australian has a right to raise their concerns about treatment: but Members of Parliament have a duty to conduct due diligence.
It’s not the first time the Liberals have been caught spreading outrageous lies about our health care workers.
Last year, David Speirs provided a video to media of an ambulance on the Level 4 carpark of Flinders Medical Centre – claiming it was ramped with a patient inside.
This was a lie.
The SA Ambulance Service advised at the time that the hard-working paramedic was parked in the carpark to give their vehicle a COVID clean after transporting a patient to hospital.
The crew was following safety procedures and absolutely doing the right thing.
This follows Ashton Hurn’s earlier gaffe when she called on the Government to put patients in the Julia Farr Centre – even though that building had been stripped bare for sale by the previous Liberal government.
David Speirs and Ashton Hurn continue to fudge the facts and unfairly attack our ambulance service, which has been working tirelessly over the past two years to turn around the poor response times after years of cuts from the Liberals.
The Liberals shamefully let ambulance response times deteriorate to the point that in a life-threatening emergency, there was a two in three chance the ambulance would not turn up on time.
Now, thanks to the investments the Malinauskas Labor Government has made, there’s a two in three chance the ambulance will arrive on time.
We have put more than 170 extra ambos on the road and hired more than 550 additional health staff above attrition since coming to government.
We still have more investments to come – more doctors, nurses, ambos and hospital beds, including 150 inpatient beds to open this year alone.
As put by Chris Picton
David Speirs and Ashton Hurn should apologise to our hard-working ambos for the lies they continue to spread.
I think South Australians would be shocked that David Speirs and Ashton Hurn don’t seek to fact-check their claims with the ambulance service before they jump into the media.
They’re not at all interested in truth, or policies to help South Australians. Just getting a headline.
Our ambulance service and health system are turning around after years of budget cuts when David Speirs sat around the Cabinet table.
Over the past two years we’ve halved the number of people waiting too long for a lights-and-sirens ambulance – but there’s still more to go.
Next time David Speirs and Ashton Hurn hold another press conference, everyone will be very wary: Are they telling the truth? Have they checked their facts?
