Bills

New Women's and Children's Hospital Bill

Committee Stage

In committee (resumed on motion).

Clause 6.

The CHAIR: According to my records, we are on clause 6. Member for Flinders, this will be your second contribution.

Mr TELFER: Your record is the same as mine. If you remember, Mr Chair, we were discussing clause 6 and some of the detail, the vesting of the project site. The questions that had just preceded were around the square metreage of comparable sites. The minister discussed a few of the different aspects around the difference between the site square metreage and the building size square metreage. The documentation that the government has provided to the public on this discusses the differences in a bit of compare and contrast between the proposed RAH west site and the barracks site.

I note there is a 20,000 square metre arrangement for the site as far as the RAH west site proposal and the barracks site of 40,000 square metres. I also note the difference between the proposed building site of 109 square metres and 117 square metres between the two sites so, by my very rough maths, it would be about a 7 per cent increase.

Minister, I am just trying to get my head around what the rest of the space is going to be used for. There is about a 7.3 per cent increase in the square metreage of the building site. The actual site size for the women's and children's is the number which you say is double the 20:40 square metreage approximation. In the car parking there is a slight increase, from 12 to 15 in the 2021 plan for the RAH west site and over 1,300 car parks for the barracks site.

We are going to have significant amounts of land. Is this just going to be set aside for any potential future growth and, if so, what is the short term going to be for those extra significant square metreages or is there going to be a greater footprint for the actual building site on the ground and not as much vertical?

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: I thank the member for his very good question. During question time we got the exact figure down to the square metre in relation to the project site, which, when you include the entire project site including the Gaol Road section, comes to 56,780 square metres.

That represents, as I said, the roughly 40,000 square metres to the west of Gaol Road and roughly 13,000 square metres to the east of Gaol Road that we talked about earlier. When you account for the entirety of that space within the project site box and also Gaol Road itself, it comes to 56,780. As you alluded to, there are significantly greater options and flexibility available in terms of now designing the hospital and that is one of the predominant reasons why we have gone down this path.

It does allow us to build not only a bigger hospital but also a much wider hospital than was possible on the RAH west site. The RAH west site did not enable services to be connected on the same floor. You are correct in that it will be a much larger footprint in terms of the hospital but, of course, that will not be the only thing that will be on that site. The car parking will also have to be established on that site, various plant and equipment, and various traffic movements in and out of the site.

There will also be significant landscaping and, as we have made public, we want to establish quite a significant playground area adjacent to the hospital as well to make sure that we have the best opportunity for families. I keep in mind the number of siblings who would spend a lot of time visiting the hospital to see their sibling, so it is about having somewhere fun and exciting for them to go when they are at the hospital as well. It gives us those opportunities and, in the detailed design, we will obviously be considering within that project site how there will be future orientation for expansion as well.

Mr TELFER: For clarification—and this is important information and it is important for it to be on the public record—what is the actual building footprint in the preliminary plans, the actual footprint of the building itself? What proportion is it of that approximately 40,000 square metres on the west side of Gaol Road?

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: As has been outlined, the exact detail is being worked through. We have provided the opposition in briefings previously the current schematic design of the orientation of the hospital we are looking at, which would be in the order of about 20,000 square metres to fit all of those hot floor services together, but there is obviously significant work that is underway in terms of the detailed planning of that.

The CHAIR: Member for Heysen, this will be your last contribution for this clause.

Mr TEAGUE: I had forgotten about those earlier ones.

The CHAIR: I have not forgotten.

Mr TEAGUE: No. Thank you very much, Chair. My question to the minister in due course is we have just received therefore an indication more precisely of the project site and we ask, I suppose all of us collectively, to recognise that or think about that for the time being as the whole of the area indicated as the project site in the plan set out in schedule 1. But tell me if it is something different from that.

For the purpose of the definition the subject of clause 5, 'project site', which is either the whole of the land area or some subset of that land—I think the minister has indicated that it is not going to be more than that but it could be less—there needs to be a determination at some point of what the project site is. Schedule 1 shows a boundary around a project site; that is the whole of the land.

If it is a situation in (b) where the minister actually makes a determination and it is not going to be the whole of the land that is required, then that becomes the project site, as I read it, and we could perhaps come back to this when we look at the schedule, and then as far as the vesting of the project site we have in 6(1) the whole or any part of the project site that is going to vest.

Is that there contemplating that there is going to be, first, a decision to determine what the project site is and would it therefore not make sense for that to be (a) the whole amount, and then subsequently a decision that vests possibly any part of the project site in the minister, and that is done by the notice in the Gazette because, if not, what work does that have to do in 6(1)? Clearly, the work of the definition needs to provide certainty prior to the consideration of the 6(1) determination because otherwise one would be doing no work or the other one, and I know we have already completed it, but we would have to revisit clause 5 and the project site definition in that case.

So to put it in practical terms, the project site has been described as the 56,780 square metres and made up of those component parts. Are we not therefore to take that as necessarily the project site as defined, and are we right to then think that there will be some subsequent exercise of discretion for the purposes of clause 6(1)?

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: My understanding—and we have already obviously dealt with clause 5—is that clause 5 makes clear what the project site is. The question being raised was there would be a future determination of that, is not my understanding. The project site is the area of the land, except for (b), if that essentially we could give up some of that land that is not in the project site in a future way if that was no longer required in the future.

The second section regarding clause 6(1) is in relation to investing it to the minister in fee simple. We will get some advice. I dare say we may well be back to discuss this. We might not finish this bill in full in the next minute, so I will get some clarity before we next join our happy discussion on this bill. It may well be that that could be in relation to either a timing question why that has been drafted in that particular way—some of the ownership may be taken on various points in time—or there may be another reason. We will seek some clarity for why it has been staged like that and not just the entire ownership would come into the minister immediately.

To clarify, we have had some advice: there may be a stage requirement in terms of the ownership of the barracks site and that is why that option has been given in clause 6(1).

Progress reported; committee to sit again.

Sitting extended beyond 18:00 on motion of Hon. C.J. Picton.