Sarah Herrmann, Yorke Peninsula Country Times

Yorke Peninsula was left behind by the 2025-26 state budget, with no specific funding announcements for the region.

The budget invested $1.9 billion in health, but none was specifically earmarked for Yorke Peninsula, despite the recent parliamentary inquiry into health services in the area.

However, Health Minister Chris Picton has advised the YP Country Times the government will next month deliver on its 2022-23 budget commitment to provide two new ambulances, a 24/7 ambulance crew and a community paramedic based in Wallaroo, and an upgrade to the Wallaroo ambulance station.

Mr Picton also said the 2025-26 budget increased regional local health networks’ operating budgets by 12 per cent, or $157 million, including $24.4M for the Yorke and Northern LHN.

At the 2025-26 budget media conference on Thursday, June 5, YPCT asked Treasurer Stephen Mullighan why YP had missed out on new, specific funding and when we could expect the Economic and Finance Committee’s recommendations from the inquiry.

“I understand those considerations are underway about how to further boost those services,” Treasurer Mullighan said. “I imagine that the pressures on Yorke Peninsula community in terms of health services are not too dissimilar to what we see in other non-metro regional parts of South Australia — not just making sure we’ve got emergency medical services available but we’ve also got all of those other services like primary care, GPs, aged care facilities, and so on.

“While we are improving parts of the healthcare system on Yorke Peninsula, we recognise there’s more work to be done.”

SA Health was also working with LHNs across the state to “go through a really thorough future planning process” for hospital and health service delivery, Mr Mullighan said in response to a question from The Barossa Leader about a lack of funding for a new hospital in their region.

YPCT also asked Mr Mullighan why YP had received no budget funding for telecommunications or power infrastructure upgrades, nor compensation, following the mega outage on March 14 and the many experienced before and after.

“I can’t speak so much about the telecommunications infrastructure, I can talk about the power infrastructure,” he said.

“We are aware of those power outages and the fault in the ElectraNet infrastructure that caused that.

“The Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis has actually changed legislation in recent months in parliament to introduce a new compensation regime for households and businesses that are at a financial loss as a result of losing those services.”

YPCT understands this regime is for Small Claims Compensation Scheme, which only applies to losses caused by surges, not outages. (see YPCT 6-5-25).

However, Mr Mullighan advised that YP could expect to benefit from some of the broader regional initiatives announced in the budget, including the government’s headline $395M investment in law and order.

“As part of the road safety package, what the Yorke Peninsula can look forward to is an increased police presence, particularly from motorcycle police, who are our frontline police from a road safety perspective,” he said.

“The extra 98 police security officers (funded in the budget) are being deployed to the regions to free up frontline sworn police officers to actually be out on the beat in regional communities and not stuck doing administrative tasks and support roles.

“And the road upgrades and white spot upgrades that are funded in this budget will be delivered for communities including the Yorke Peninsula.”

While funding allocations are still being planned, Transport Minister Tom Koutsantonis confirmed to YPCT that audio tactile line marking would be installed on Upper Yorke Road from Kulpara to Arthurton and Port Broughton to Bute later this year, and 6.7 kilometres of St Vincent Highway will be resurfaced.

This article appeared in Yorke Peninsula Country Times, 11 June 2025.