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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-03-03 Daily Xml
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ROYAL ADELAIDE HOSPITAL

Mr HAMILTON-SMITH (Waite—Leader of the Opposition) (14:49): My question is again to the Minister for Health. Why can't this government rebuild the Royal Adelaide Hospital at a cost and with minimal disruption to existing operations as achieved by the state Labor government of New South Wales at both the Royal North Shore Hospital and Westmead?

The Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney is one of New South Wales' largest and busiest hospitals. The New South Wales health minister, John Della Bosca, who probably should be over here, said in September 2008 that his Royal North Shore Hospital rebuilding project would replace 53 current buildings—

The Hon. K.O. Foley interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The Deputy Premier will come to order!

Mr HAMILTON-SMITH: —with a mix of current modern facilities and new structures. He said:

The $950 million total redevelopment of the site includes research and education facilities, medical equipment and information technology, in addition to the new acute hospital facilities. It is an outstanding design that can expand to meet the future health care needs of the people of Sydney and New South Wales.

The New South Wales government claims that during the rebuild there will be minimum disruption to existing hospital operations and that the project is planned for completion in one stage over 4½ years. In the case of Westmead Hospital, rebuilding was achieved with no disruption to existing activities.

The Hon. J.D. HILL (Kaurna—Minister for Health, Minister for the Southern Suburbs, Minister Assisting the Premier in the Arts) (14:51): I thank the Leader of the Opposition for the question. It gives me another opportunity to ask him, yet again: where is his costing, what is his plan and how will he do it? Apart from that, I find it a curious approach to ask: why are we not building the Royal North Shore Hospital in Adelaide? We are not building the Royal North Shore Hospital. It is a hospital in Sydney, it is a smaller hospital, it is on a different site and it has a different role.

The Hon. K.O. Foley interjecting:

The Hon. J.D. HILL: I know it well because my sister died in the Royal North Shore Hospital. I have spend a lot of time in that hospital so I know it exceptionally well. The hospital we are building has a different function. It is the central hospital for South Australia. It will be the only quaternary hospital, that is, it will be the only hospital that will have a range of services that no other hospital in South Australia will have. It is a substantially bigger hospital than the Royal North Shore Hospital. The Royal North Shore Hospital has about 500 beds and ours will have about 800 beds; and I do not know about all the other infrastructure associated with it.

Even if we wanted to build the Royal North Shore Hospital in Adelaide, we could not build it on the RAH site because it is full with existing hospital. The difference is that at Royal North Shore Hospital there is plenty of adjacent space where they can build another hospital. We are essentially doing that in our other infrastructure. We are not opposed to rebuilding hospitals where we can. At Lyell McEwin Hospital we are building new infrastructure because there is room and we can expand the hospital capacity while running the existing hospital. We are doing similar things at the QEH. It is slightly more difficult, but we are doing it by knocking over buildings and erecting new buildings because there is enough room to do that. We can do similar things at Flinders Medical Centre, but we cannot do it on the existing site of the RAH.

In relation to the Royal North Shore Hospital, I inform the house that the Royal North Shore Hospital redevelopment has been underway for about five years and the building stage is to be completed in 2013, so I estimate that is about a 10 year project to do a hospital which is substantially smaller than the one we intend to build. I understand the costings have increased over the course of the project and, as I say, it is a smaller hospital.

In any event, you can point to any hospital in the world and ask, 'Why can't we build that hospital here?' The fact is that we have designed a hospital which Adelaide needs and which has increased capacity. We have found a site on which to build a hospital that will be the best hospital we can possibly have and it will be completed by 2016, when it is needed to provide services to the population of South Australia. If you were not to do that and were to rebuild in some cockamamie way on the existing RAH site, you would not have the capacity our state would need when we need it.

I say to the opposition again: if you want to push rebuilding or the building of a new hospital on the RAH site, be honest and tell us how you will do it, how much it will cost, what capacity it will have and when it will be opened.

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