House of Assembly Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1) 55 1 Parliament of South Australia House of Assembly published Question Time Women's and Children's Hospital Women's and Children's Hospital Mrs HURN House of Assembly Schubert Women's and Children's Hospital Mrs HURN (Schubert) (14:37): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Will the government be allocating any additional money for upgrades to the existing Women's and Children's Hospital in the upcoming state budget and, if so, how much and for what purpose? The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN House of Assembly Lee Treasurer Minister for Defence and Space Industries Minister for Police Women's and Children's Hospital The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Treasurer, Minister for Defence and Space Industries, Minister for Police) (14:37): Well, I wasn't going to say anything about the budget that I am going to hand down in three weeks but—do you know what?—now I will. In fact, here it all is; let me get it out now. I understand the question that the member for Schubert asks, and it does go to the fact that in our first budgets we had allocated additional funds for the Women's and Children's Hospital for perhaps what you would call sustainment works or periodic upgrades, bearing in mind that when we came to government we only had an unreleased business case which was done for the previous government that dated back to 2019 without any updated cost estimates. As the Minister for Health outlined to the house yesterday, that was contingent on a plan to deliver a new hospital that only had one extra bed in it. When we came to government, we did a piece of work superintended by Jim Hallion, supported by SA Health staff, and other infrastructure advisers, to update the options for the government, as the Premier has articulated to the house. We chose a much bigger site at Thebarton so that we could have a hospital that was fit for purpose, that was expandable into the future, and when it was open it would have additional beds. But we recognised in the course of that work that we would need to provide and allocate some additional funds. So I think our record stands pretty clear on that. We have done that for the existing Women's and Children's Hospital and, as for what is in the budget on Thursday in three weeks, I look forward to updating the house in three weeks' time.