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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-06-17 Daily Xml
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HEALTH AND MEDICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:57): My question is to the Minister for Health. Will he identify where the $200 million federally funded health research institute is going to be built on the rail yards area, and is any remediation required to be undertaken for that part of the site?

The Hon. J.D. HILL (Kaurna—Minister for Health, Minister for the Southern Suburbs, Minister Assisting the Premier in the Arts) (14:57): I thank the deputy leader for her question and for her acknowledgment that the research centre will be built on the site. It will not create enough room on the site for a football stadium or the Women's and Children's Hospital rebuild, which she seems to be advocating, but there will be plenty of room there for the new RAH as well.

When we approached the commonwealth government in relation to this, we said we wanted to build it and we needed to build it in close proximity to the new RAH, and we identified the railway site as the appropriate location. It will be built to the east of the hospital development; to the west of the skate park that is on the site now.

The issue of remediation is something which will be addressed. There are two remediation issues on the site. One is the level of hydrocarbons that are floating on top of the watertable. As I understand it, they are in the process of being removed. We need to do that by drilling and putting in an oil rig, really, to suck the hydrocarbons off the watertable. That would have to be done whether or not there was any redevelopment on the site, because there is always a risk of hydrocarbons approaching the Torrens.

The second issue is the remediation of the soil on the site. Of course, the construction of the hospital and the research facility will largely deal with that, because when the hospital and the research facility are built soil will be removed and taken away from the site and then, of course, a concrete pad would be put down over the site. As I understand it, in most circumstances that would be sufficient. There would be some perimeter which would need to be cleaned up, and that will occur as well.

There have been some extraordinary suggestions in the media—I think amplified by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition—that the clean-up of the site would cost $1 billion or thereabouts. I inform the house, the media and the world that we budgeted for a maximum of $40 million for clean-up of the site, and we anticipate the cost to be well below that. The exact price we are not releasing for commercial in confidence reasons. I can give the honourable member an upper limit, which is $40 million, and the advice I have is that the remediation costs will be considerably less than that.

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