Question Time

ROYAL ADELAIDE HOSPITAL

Mrs REDMOND (Heysen—Leader of the Opposition) (14:03): My question is to the Minister for Health. Now that the minister has the Macquarie Bank prospectus on the new Royal Adelaide Hospital, will the minister confirm that the cost of the new Royal Adelaide Hospital is, in fact, $2.73 billion?

The Hon. J.D. HILL (Kaurna—Minister for Health, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Minister for the Southern Suburbs, Minister Assisting the Premier in the Arts) (14:03): I thank the member for that question. She starts with an assertion which is false. I don't have the document that she refers to.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: I don't have the document that she refers to. I understand that the document that she refers to is a prospectus that was put out by Macquarie Bank and given in confidence under signed agreement by a number of people. Amongst those people is included Dr Jim Katsaros, the head of the Save the RAH committee.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: This is the same Dr Katsaros who campaigned at the last state election against the Royal Adelaide Hospital who got—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr WILLIAMS: I rise on a point of order. The question was plainly about the confirmation by the government of the numbers in the document. It has nothing to do with speculation of where the document might have come from.

The SPEAKER: Sit down member for MacKillop. I don't uphold that point of order; I presume it was relevance you were talking about. I think the minister's answer was self-explanatory about why he is not agreeing with or confirming the numbers.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: Thank you, Madam Speaker. The question made an assertion that I have the document. I was explaining the provenance of the document, which would be that if I had been given a copy of the document—which I have not—I would be duty bound to hand it back to Macquarie, because it is under some sort of confidentiality agreement. I understand—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: —that Mr Katsaros had a copy—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: Of course, the Leader of the Opposition in the other place held a media conference last week, talking about this document. That was an act of brilliance on his part because he was asked where the document was and he couldn't answer that question. So, one hopes—

Mr WILLIAMS: Point of order. At this stage, Madam Speaker, I am sure you will agree with me that this has no relevance to the question about whether the billion dollar blowout—

The SPEAKER: Sit down, member for MacKillop; I understand your point of order. It is straying very close to irrelevance. Minister for Health, back to the question.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: I was responding to an interjection, Madam Speaker. Perhaps if the opposition did not interject they would not be—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! Do you want to hear the answer to the question or not? We will move on.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: If the opposition has a copy of the document, once again I would say to them, 'Please table it here, if you have a copy.' But if they have a copy of the document they would know, as I understand from a media report today, that the document shows the construction costs of the Royal Adelaide Hospital, according to Macquarie, to be $1.78 billion. The construction costs would be $1.78 billion. The snitch on the other side—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: —the member for Davenport, the class snitch, has made a claim in here which is manifestly untrue. The construction costs, according to the Macquarie document, as reported in the media today, were $1.78 or $1.8 billion. So the snitch from Davenport, who continually interjects, is wrong. Now, let me give the house—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: Let me give the house an example, which might put it into language that everybody in here can understand. When someone buys a house, you talk about the costs of the construction. So, you go to a building company and say, 'How much will it cost to put a house on this property? What is the construction cost?' Let us say that it is $200,000; let us say that you own the land and you ask to build a house for $200,000—if you can get a house for that price these days. You then go to the bank and seek a mortgage. If you took out a 35-year loan with the bank at an interest rate of, for example, 7 per cent the total interest payable on a $200,000 mortgage over 35 years would be $336,000.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: We all know that if you build something you have to pay for the cost of finance. We also have to pay for a whole range of things in relation to this project, because what we are doing with the PPP is bringing onto the table, in advance, the cost of maintenance, the cost of cleaning, all the costs associated with the non-clinical side of the operations. The opposition knows this; it is deliberately trying to confuse and mislead the public, because that is the only thing it has expertise in. It knows how to confuse. The opposition lost on the oval development yesterday, and it will lose on the Royal Adelaide Hospital. This is a good development for South Australia. The details of the costings will be made absolutely clear to the public once the contract has been signed. The information, which will be available through Treasury, will be made completely available—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: —to the public, and everybody will know that the opposition—

Mr Williams interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, member for MacKillop!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: Everybody will know that the opposition has been gilding the lily on this.