Privatisation

The Hon. T.J. STEPHENS (15:16): My question is to the Treasurer. Treasurer, are you concerned that the new Royal Adelaide Hospital privatisation could be a bigger debacle than the State Bank under the former Labor government?

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (15:17): As my colleague the Minister for Health has just highlighted, for a Labor Party which claims to be anti-privatisation, the Royal Adelaide Hospital contract, which is a $2.4 billion contract, as he pointed out, is entirely run—it is owned by private sector operators, owned by private sector operators; it is run, in terms of all of its non-clinical services, by private sector operators. So how can the former government, now opposition, with a straight face stand up in this chamber and try to pretend that it is an anti-privatisation party, when the Minister for Health has very effectively demolished that particular argument just as it applies to the health portfolio, let alone the many other portfolios that the former Labor government was privatising as well?

However, it is now well known that the new Liberal government has inherited a mess in relation to the contractual arrangements for the new Royal Adelaide Hospital contract. We are knee deep, perhaps even almost neck deep, in litigation, whether it be arbitration, mediation or any other 'ation' you can think of.

The bottom line is that it is costing the taxpayers literally tens of millions of dollars in terms of trying to resolve the problems in terms of the financial mismanagement of that particular contract at the new Royal Adelaide Hospital. It, in and of itself, is a significant cause of the problems I have identified, and so has the minister, in relation to the CALHN overspending and blowout, not just for this year but for the last four years as well.

So there is no doubting that the potential financial consequences of the financial mismanagement by the former Labor government of this particular deal are indeed very significant to the people of South Australia. Whether ultimately in dollar terms they will be more significant than the State Bank, one would hope not. They are indeed significant. We are talking a total cost in terms of billions of dollars. We are talking in terms of potential risk in terms of tens of millions of dollars, potentially hundreds of millions over the 30-year life cycle of the hospital. We would hope that, with the good financial practices of the new Minister for Health and his people, we might be able to retrieve and correct some of the mess that the minister has inherited, in the interests of the taxpayers of South Australia.