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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-03-09 Daily Xml
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ROYAL ADELAIDE HOSPITAL

The Hon. S.W. KEY (Ashford) (14:05): My question is directed to the Minister for Health. How will new the Royal Adelaide Hospital achieve energy savings compared to the current site?

The Hon. J.D. HILL (Kaurna—Minister for Health, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Minister for the Southern Suburbs, Minister Assisting the Premier in the Arts) (14:06): I thank the member for Ashford for her question and I acknowledge her very strong environmental credentials going back many decades—not that many decades but a few decades anyway—in public life.

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. J.D. HILL: A couple. The new Royal Adelaide Hospital will be built with regard to attaining high standards in all key elements required in a modern health facility. It will have an advanced clinical model, it will have a higher ICT capacity and it will be post-disaster capable. Additionally, it will be significantly more energy efficient than the existing Royal Adelaide Hospital.

Mr Pengilly interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! Member for Finniss, behave!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: I would say to the members of the opposition who interject upon me, please ask me further questions. I am happy to answer all of your questions; I always am.

An honourable member interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: You should do it in an orderly fashion though, members of the opposition. As a minimum standard, the project company building the new Royal Adelaide Hospital must demonstrate at least a four-star Green Star design and as-built rating. I will explain that: they need to design it so that it is four-star, but when it is built, which will be in five years, it has to be at least four stars at the standard that applies at that time. Just to give members some indication, I understand that the standard has improved by about 15 per cent over the last year. So, it will need to be at least four stars.

The Hon. I.F. Evans interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, member for Davenport!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: Member for Davenport, ask me as many questions as you would like. I would love to hear you ask questions in an orderly fashion in question time. In comparison to the new hospital's planned best practice energy efficiency, the existing Royal Adelaide Hospital—remember the existing one, the one that the members on the other side wanted to save and ran a campaign to save—does not even have a Green Star rating. In fact, it is one of the highest consumers of utilities within our health department.

The information regarding the new Royal Adelaide Hospital in the public realm is that the new facility will use a maximum of 139 kilograms per CO2 per M2, which is 139 kilograms of carbon dioxide per square metre, and the facility will be 17,460 square metres. I will let the geniuses on the other side do the maths there. We can therefore extrapolate quite a lot about the stand-alone effect of the new Royal Adelaide Hospital—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: —on government building CO2 emissions. Despite being bigger, having more beds, a bigger emergency department, more operating theatres and more equipment, the new Royal Adelaide Hospital will be 40 per cent more carbon efficient than the existing hospital—the hospital that members opposite wanted to save, the polluting hospital that they wanted to save. As a stand-alone effect, this will reduce health's CO2 emissions by 7.9 per cent. So, across the whole of the health portfolio, building this new hospital will reduce the carbon emissions by about 8 per cent. That is a major breakthrough in terms of dealing with the impact on climate change.

The new Royal Adelaide Hospital will be a vast improvement on the existing hospital in terms of health care and green credentials. I would like to emphasise that the rating tool—and this is a bit technical for members, so they might like to listen—for a healthcare facility is different to that of, for example, an office building, a school or a house, recognising the distinctly different uses that each building has. The four-star—

Mrs Redmond interjecting:

The Hon. J.D. HILL: 'Oh,' she says, as if somehow she understands all this. The Leader of the Opposition—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: —is a genius in all regards. We have to acknowledge that. I am always happy to take questions from the opposition on any of these issues. Unfortunately, they leave it to the shadow minister for health, halfway through question time, to ask questions I would have already answered, but they always have the greatest questions when I am talking—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: —and when I sit down they don't bother to ask them. It just means that they are just playing games.

The four Green Star certified rating signifies best practice in environmentally sustainable design and/or construction. The recent Lyell McEwin Hospital—which won environmental awards and I am very pleased about that—stage 2 redevelopment also achieved a four-star rating. Given the progressively increasing targets of the building codes across Australia—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The minister will be heard in silence.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: I am glad I excite them, Madam Speaker, I am. I really am glad. Given the progressively increasing targets of the Building Code of Australia, the 2016 four-star rating will require far more energy efficiency than today's standard, for example. I have said that, where possible, the project will strive for even greater energy efficiency, a greener building than the four-star rating. So, the four-star rating is the platform and we would like to do better.

In fact, SA Health Partnership, the project company that builds the new Royal Adelaide Hospital, has strong incentives to achieve the best possible energy efficiency because they will be, in part, responsible for energy and water consumption on the site; that is, they will pay for the energy consumption, as per the project agreement. If we use more than that, then they share the cost on a fifty-fifty basis, so we both have an incentive to reduce the amount of consumption.

The new RAH energy efficiency will be achieved by the use of a range of measures such as trigeneration. Power generation on the new Royal Adelaide site will result in a smaller carbon footprint. For those who do not know what trigeneration is—and I must say I was in that category until a little while ago—it is cogeneration plus. So, cogeneration is when you generate electricity and the heat is used to generate hot water. Trigeneration is when it is used, in addition to generating hot water, to generate iced water as well. So, that is what it will be doing. They will also, of course, have solar heating and an improved patient environment with incorporated green areas, and, of course, apart from the energy side of things, water use will be reduced.

An honourable member interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: In all elements, the new Royal Adelaide Hospital will be a more efficient hospital than the one that they wanted to save.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: The one they are committed to saving. Their only health policy is not doing something and what they want to do is save an inefficient hospital.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

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