There is a crisis for South Australian paramedics, and it’s only going to get worse. Hospital emergency departments increasingly are over capacity, so instead of handing patients over to the doctors and nurses, paramedics are forced to care for them outside on the ramps leading to the hospital entrance. This “ramping” can lead to long lines of ambulances stuck waiting and therefore unable to respond to new emergency calls. 
We now have the worst ambulance response times in the history of the state. And ramping is at the highest levels on record: in just one month this year, patients were forced to stay in ambulances outside hospitals for more than 2,800 hours. 
The crisis is a direct result of underfunding. <a>Steven Marshall</a>’s Liberal government has cut $11 million from ambulance services since coming into office. 
Ambulance workers, healthcare professionals and supporters gathered at Parliament House on 17 November to present a petition with 44,000 signatures demanding an end to ramping and greater funding for ambulance services.
Speakers at the rally described direct experience of ramping, having lost family members to the long wait times. In one instance three months ago, a 60-year-old woman unable to breathe waited 35 minutes for help. The ambulance station was just three minutes from her house, but it had no vehicles available. She died.
“Ramping is worse than ever, our workload continues to rise, and people cannot get the help they need when they need it most”, Lynsey Irwin, president of the ambulance workers’ union, said, addressing the crowd.
As she spoke, ambulances passed and honked their horns. So did fire engines. Firies are another part of the workforce bearing the brunt of this crisis. 
“What’s been happening is a larger number of what the fire service calls ‘ambulance assist’”, Max Adlam, secretary of the United Fire Fighters Union, told Red Flag.
 “Ambulance assist is generally where the ambos would call the firies to come and help them. But what’s been happening is not only are the numbers of those calls increasing, but now we’re finding incidents where firies are being called to an event where there is no ambulance—where there will be no ambulance for a considerable period. They’re being called to attend incidents where they don’t have the equipment [and] they certainly don’t have the training.”
This situation is set to worsen with the Marshall government’s plan to allow the coronavirus to begin circulating in the state from 26 November.
“The research says that four to six weeks after borders opening is when we start to see peak numbers, so we all know that come January it’s not gonna be a very fun time at work”, Irwin said. 
“There’s been no COVID preparation for the South Australian ambulance service, so while other health services like doctors, nurses and hospitals have had a plan for funding and for when COVID comes, we’ve had nothing. Not a single extra resource that has been planned in COVID preparedness.”

Sage Jupe

Crisis for South Australian paramedics

Abortion law in South Australia has not changed in 50 years. The procedure is still covered by the state’s criminal law, and intentionally self-aborting or acting to abort another person’s pregnancy can be punished by life imprisonment. If anyone, including doctors, supplies women with medication or tools to carry out an abortion, they can be jailed for up to three years.
“The impact of criminalisation, including the harsh penalties in South Australia, is to stigmatise abortion, which is something one in three Australian women will need at some point in their lives”, member of the South Australian Abortion Action Coalition and Flinders University associate professor Dr Catherine Kevin told Red Flag. “There should be no shame attached to this form of health care”, she said, “but the spectre of criminal law sends the message that there is something very wrong with seeking or providing an abortion”.
To access an abortion legally in South Australia, approval must be gained from two doctors on the basis that a serious threat to the health of the woman or foetus is posed by the pregnancy. The procedure must be carried out at a prescribed hospital, and the woman must have lived in South Australia for more than two months. “This undermines women’s autonomy and is a poor use of precious health resources. [The requirement] tells a woman that she is somehow not competent to make a decision about her own reproductive health”, Dr Kevin states. An added complication for women is that the right of doctors not to participate in abortions is protected.
Suzanna, 23, recounted her experience to Buzzfeed earlier this year. “I called the pregnancy hotline and had an appointment with a doctor, and another doctor and then another appointment with a counsellor”, she said. “In each one of those appointments, I had to show my resolve that this was something I wanted to do and it took about two weeks for all of the appointments to be done and to access the procedure ... I had to keep telling my story over and over again and I had to keep justifying my decision to terminate the pregnancy.”
Women from rural areas face even greater barriers. Everywhere else in Australia, women can gain access to the abortion pill RU486 via a phone consultation with a doctor. A package containing the drug, painkillers and anti-inflammatory medicine is then mailed to the patient. This is not the case in South Australia, where all abortions, including non-surgical ones, must happen in a prescribed hospital. Two of these facilities have been closed in the last 18 months, resulting in long waits for treatment, and there is only one legally prescribed facility that provides abortion consultation full time.
RU486 consists of two doses taken 24 to 48 hours apart. For many rural women, accessing this treatment involves the financial stress of taking time off work, planning a trip to Adelaide and finding accommodation for at least two days just to take two pills.
 “I spent two and a half weeks in torment”, 39-year-old “Janine” told the Advertiser earlier this year. “I knew in my head what I wanted (to do) but I had to wait – it was the worst time of my life”, she says. “There has to be a better way to manage this for women – it was torture.”
There is currently a campaign under way to decriminalise abortion in South Australia. To win real choice for women, there will need to be a fight not only to legalise abortion, but for it also to be accessible and free.
The South Australian Abortion Action Coalition has called a pro-choice rally in Adelaide on Saturday 2 November.

South Australian women fighting for the right to choose

More than 100 nurses rallied on 15 October in protest at dangerous overcrowding at the Royal Adelaide Hospital.
The new $2.3 billion hospital was opened in September 2017, and with 800 beds is South Australia’s largest. Yet already there is severe overcrowding. 
Staff report being forced to treat patients in the back of ambulances, and patients in emergency are waiting up to 24 hours for a bed. 
Nurses told Red Flag that this creates a serious risk of death for emergency patients.
Renee, a nurse at the hospital, said she felt frustrated that she “can’t treat patients that need treating”, and that “something has to change soon”.
Other staff expressed anger, telling Red Flag that these conditions “put the lives of the elderly and mental health patients at greatest risk”.
The rally came after a meeting on 8 October of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, at which several hundred Royal Adelaide Hospital nursing staff voted unanimously in favour of taking industrial action to pressure the state government to solve the overcrowding problem.
The minister for Health and Wellbeing responded by committing to an increase of 50 sub-acute beds, of which 20 will be private, as well as 11 additional mental health beds.
This is unlikely to solve the problem. The South Australian branch of the ANMF is vowing to continue the campaign so long as patient safety is deemed to be at risk.

Nurses rally against overcrowding

Take a plane to Adelaide and you’ll be greeted at the airport with a billboard advertising the University of Adelaide’s Masters of Marine Engineering and the promise of a future career in submarines, shipbuilding and defence.
Take a taxi to the University of South Australia’s open day and you can attend an information session about careers in defence. Or peruse the Flinders University website and read about “a day very soon when we have unmanned warships patrolling our 132,000 kilometres of coastline. We [at Flinders University] are developing that capability now”.
All three South Australian universities have dirty ties with the world’s largest weapons companies and the militaries they supply. All are members of the Joint Open Innovation Network run by BAE Systems, one of the world’s largest arms companies. BAE Systems has invested $10 million in the network to create more defence-focused courses and research.
Over the past two years, Flinders University has signed memoranda of understanding with weapons giants Fincantieri, Northrop Grumman, Thales and BAE Systems, one of which involves work on the Joint Strike Fighter program (an international program to upgrade fighter, strike and ground attack aircraft).
The University of South Australia’s Defence and Systems Institute (DASI) is the largest of its kind in Australia, offering degrees and research developed in collaboration with arms companies.
Through DASI, these companies have become part of the university structure, with students in science, technology, engineering and maths undertaking placements the Saab Australia-UniSA Defence Technologies Institute.
On DASI’s advisory board sit representatives of Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, BAE Systems and SAAB Systems, as well as government representatives from Defence SA and the Defence Science and Technology Organisation. DASI also collaborates with the US military, the US Army Research Laboratory being a partner of the institute.
This turn toward the arms industry is also highlighted by the sharing of personnel between military and university administrations. Jim McDowell, the recently appointed Chancellor of UniSA, is a case in point. McDowell was CEO of BAE Systems Australia from 2001 to 2011 and CEO of BAE Systems Saudi Arabia from 2011 to 2013.
Last year, UniSA hired a former army officer and head of industry engagement for Saab Australia, Matt Opie, to guide university strategy for the defence sector.
“I’ll be dedicated to improving the way university research and industry collaboration can develop and deliver what the Australian Defence Force needs”, he said.
Flinders University has similar sordid ties. Since 2012, Christine Zeitz has been a member of the chief decision-making body at the university. Zeitz spent 25 years working for BAE Systems and has been vice-president of Lockheed Martin since 2015.
These companies are even making their way into schools. Lockheed Martin runs an “Engineers in the Classroom” program, and Raytheon and the Australian Submarine Corporation, as part of the Air Warfare Destroyer Alliance, have developed curriculum for the Maritime High School of South Australia at Le Fevre High School.
It’s appalling that murderous corporations have such power in our education system. Plenty of things should take research priority, including better transport, life-saving medical treatments and sustainable energy.
But as long as military corporations buy our universities and graduates, research into death and destruction will be the order of the day.

Crisis for South Australian paramedics

South Australian women fighting for the right to choose

Nurses rally against overcrowding

SA universities tie themselves to weapons of mass destruction

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