New Women's and Children's Hospital

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA (Hartley—Leader of the Opposition) (14:21): My question is again to the Premier. Does the Premier guarantee that the new Women's and Children's Hospital will be delivered on time and on budget? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA: On 7 June the government announced interstate design firm BLP will replace Woods Bagot as the new architectural team for the new Women's and Children's Hospital. There is currently no design for this project, and this comes after the project had been left rudderless for almost six months with no project director.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:21): I certainly do not accept the argument and the inaccuracies in the explanation from the member's question. However, my answer is very similar to the answer I gave in the previous sitting week, which is that this is a project the government is committed to, this is a project on which the government is working as hard and as fast as possible.

All the advice we have is that we are confident in terms of the 2031 date, which obviously is six years away. There is work underway on the construction of this site already; you just have to go down Port Road and see construction underway on that site in terms of both the demolition of the barracks site and the site preparation works that are now underway in terms of connecting essential services to that site, as well as the construction of what is a very significantly large car park on the site.

A lot of planning has been done, and we are now very pleased with the architectural team we have employed. Of course, they are not starting from scratch. There are significant designs that have been in place, but we are looking forward to the new team's work on those designs, improving those designs and working with our clinical team to make sure we get the best possible outcome for this project, which is critical for the women and children of this state into the future.

What I can absolutely assure the house will be the case is that this will be a larger hospital than what was previously envisaged and it is going to meet the needs of this state well into the future, as opposed to the previous plan that was going to have one extra overnight bed and was going to take up the expansion space of the Royal Adelaide Hospital. You would have two landlocked hospitals into the future. We know that at some stage the Royal Adelaide Hospital is going to have to expand, and that would have shut off the opportunity for that to happen. We will now have two hospitals that will be larger and will have the capacity to be able to expand into the future, which is obviously a very good outcome for the patients of this state long into the future.