A Shorten Labor Government will invest $35 million to upgrade and expand emergency departments and slash ED waiting times in South Australia.

Forty per cent of people who present to EDs in SA are not seen within clinically recommended times.

For urgent patients, that number rises to more than 50 per cent.

That will only get worse if Scott Morrison is re-elected on 18 May because he plans to cut $144 million from SA’s public hospitals over the next six years.

This is equivalent to:

• 36 beds a year for six years.
• 99 doctors a year for six years.
• 202 nurses a year for six years.
• 216,000 ED visits.
• 350,000 outpatient visits.
• 40,000 cataract extractions.
• 5,500 knee replacements.

 Under Labor, SA hospitals will be an estimated $197 million better off.

That’s the combined total of SA’s share of our Better Hospitals Fund – which reverses the Liberal cuts of the next six years – our new investment in driving down ED waiting times, and our separate investment in cancer patient waiting times.

Labor has already committed to a number of hospital capital projects in SA including a $50m contribution to the new Women’s and Children Hospital.

In SA, a Shorten Labor Government will also link two regional hospitals to our National Telestroke Network, provide a new Camp Quality Liaison Officers, eight specialist cancer nurses, two new Red Cross Milk Banks and two additional Medicare MRI licences.

SA will also benefit from other elements of Labor’s $2.3 billion Medicare Cancer Plan, as well as our $2.4 billion Pensioner Dental Plan.