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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-05-05 Daily Xml
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ROYAL ADELAIDE HOSPITAL

Mrs REDMOND (Heysen—Leader of the Opposition) (14:39): My question is to the Minister for Health. Will the minister confirm that the cost of the new Royal Adelaide Hospital at its opening will be $2.73 billion and that the ongoing maintenance and non-clinical service costs are additional to this?

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) (14:39): I thank the member for her question. The issue is simply the same issue as I canvassed yesterday in this house. The document that the opposition is relying on, which was leaked to the media yesterday—

Ms Chapman interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

An honourable member: She has been doing that all day, ma'am.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: Twenty-four or 25 times, I think—and 13 times before question time, I gather, during ministerial statements. The issues were—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: It doesn't make any sense. It's an interjection without any content, so it's just noise for the sake of it, Madam Speaker.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr Pisoni: Ignore it then and answer the question.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: I can't—you're interrupting me. He is a buffoon, Madam Speaker, a complete and absolute buffoon.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr PISONI: Point of order.

The SPEAKER: Order! Member for Unley.

Mr PISONI: I ask that the minister withdraw.

The SPEAKER: The member is offended, I understand, then I would ask the minister to—

Mr PISONI: I understand that the minister has referred to a member on this side as an animal.

The SPEAKER: No, I didn't hear any—

Members interjecting:

Mr PISONI: It's unparliamentary to—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! Sit down.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: I'm not sure what a 'buffoon' is, but I don't think it is an animal. However, the member hasn't indicated any problem, so—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr PISONI: I am offended, Madam Speaker. I do ask—and I'm a very gentle, delicate man—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: If the cap fits, wear it, is it?

Mr PISONI: I do ask that the minister—

The SPEAKER: Sit down. You are now debating the point of order. Sit down. The Minister for Road Safety.

The Hon. T.R. KENYON: On the point of order, I believe the member for Unley may be referring to a mythical animal—a combination of a baboon and a buffalo.

The SPEAKER: Order! Sit down. That's no point of order. The member for MacKillop.

Mr WILLIAMS: Thank you, Madam Speaker. I was merely going to point out that you hadn't made a ruling on the previous point of order. No wonder question time falls into this—

The SPEAKER: Order! I don't think that was a point of order either: you were asking for something. Attorney-General, perhaps you can bring some sanity back into this.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I hope so, Madam Speaker. I am wondering if the honourable member for Unley could assist all of us by spelling the name to which he has taken offence.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! That was a frivolous point of order. I won't accept that one.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! I don't know who the buffoon was, but I can think of many people who fit the bill. However, minister, have you finished your answer and we'll get on with it? Did you withdraw the term 'buffoon'? I think you should because obviously people on my left are terribly sensitive.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: It's interesting, the double standards that are applied, Madam Speaker. I am happy to withdraw the term 'buffoon'.

The SPEAKER: Thank you. Now finish your answer.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: I wasn't aware that it was an animal. Perhaps the member for Unley can give a demonstration later on to all of us. I tell you what, Madam Speaker, it may not be an animal, but I do recognise a buffoon when I see one.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: I am happy to withdraw the remark, Madam Speaker.

The SPEAKER: Thank you.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: I'll just get back to the question now. The question was: how much are we paying for the Royal Adelaide Hospital and will I confirm the particular amount at the time of opening in 2016? What I can confirm is that the finalisation of the contract with the party we are dealing with, which will construct and manage the hospital, has yet to be completed. As I have said all along, I cannot confirm anything until that occurs.

What I can confirm, though, is that as a government we don't pay any of the costs until the hospital is completed and then, when it is completed, we will pay them a fee, which—

Mr PENGILLY: Point of order.

The SPEAKER: Point of order, member for Finniss. I hope you have a point of order.

Mr PENGILLY: I am having a great deal of trouble hearing the minister's response because of the noise emanating from his colleagues to his right, some of whom are from the left.

The SPEAKER: I think that is the understatement of the day, member for Finniss, considering the noise that is coming from your side. However, I would ask people to be quiet. I can't hear either.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: It is my gentle voice, Madam Speaker. I will try to project in a more robust way so that even the member for Finniss can understand what I am saying. I was making the point that I cannot confirm any costs until they are finalised, and that will happen in the—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, the member for Bragg! And the member for Finniss, you are warned.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: The members opposite say they cannot hear and, as soon as I start answering, they start talking over what I am saying. People everywhere must understand the hypocrisy of those opposite when they behave in that way. I withdraw that, Madam Speaker, before they get up and object.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. P.F. Conlon interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: What I will confirm is this: the basis of the deal is that we do not pay anything until the hospital is completed and we occupy it.

Mrs Redmond interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, the Leader of the Opposition!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: I have got to this stage in my answer, I think, about four times and, every time I get to the next part, the Leader of the Opposition or one of the members opposite tries to provide the answer. If they think they know the answer, I am not sure why they bother asking the questions. Let me complete my answer; you may have a different answer, but let me complete my answer. We—

Mrs Redmond interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The leader will listen in silence.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: Once we have occupied the hospital, we are then responsible to pay money to the company with whom we have contracted, and that will be done on an annualised basis—I think every quarter, from memory. It is a regular amount we pay, and that figure takes into account the construction costs. We established yesterday that the Macquarie document that they were relying on for their leak says that the construction costs are in the order of what we said as the government—about $1.7 to $1.8 billion. In addition to that—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: —we have to pay the costs associated with the finance of the project and the costs associated with the running and maintenance of the hospital. In fact, what we are doing is putting on the table—bringing to the book, if you like—the real costs associated with the non-clinical aspects of running a hospital for 35 years. That is something which will give the taxpayers of this state a very clear understanding of what it really costs to run a hospital.

Hospitals are very expensive institutions to run. All of those costs now are being paid in relation to all of the other hospitals we have in this state, but you do not know how much those costs are because they are caught up in other budget lines, so there is no specific budget line for finance for hospital infrastructure, there is no specific line for various elements of maintenance, repairs, cleaning and a whole range of other things. All of those costs will be brought onto the table—

Mrs Redmond interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The Leader of the Opposition is warned.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: Every time I try to get the detail. I am actually trying to provide information to the house; I am not trying to hide anything. All of that information will be made available and people will be able to see clearly whether or not they are getting a good deal. But on the issue of whether or not we are getting a good deal, can I say that the jury is not out on this issue. We, as a state government, are absolutely committed and certain that the PPP arrangement for this hospital will be a good deal, but it is not just us who say that the PPP is a good deal. Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, which is the nation's peak infrastructure body, commissioned—

The Hon. K.O. Foley interjecting:

The Hon. J.D. HILL: Is that right? Infrastructure Partnerships Australia commissioned a major independent report that undertook the first ever comprehensive national analysis of the outcomes of projects delivered by government and those delivered through partnership with the private sector. That report concluded:

Public-private partnerships are the best method available to Australia's governments to deliver large, complex and expensive projects, achieving significant savings in both time and cost.

The RAH is one of the most complex bits of infrastructure ever built in Australia. It is one of only a handful of hospitals of that size that will have been built in the world over the last 50 years. Another key finding of that report included:

Our overall conclusion is that PPPs provide superior performance in both the cost and time dimensions, and that the PPP advantage increases (in absolute terms) with the size and complexity of projects.

The report further concluded:

In contrast to commonly held perceptions about the relative transparency of PPPs, we found that PPP projects were far more transparent than traditional projects, as measured by the availability of public data for this study.

So, that point is the point I make.

Mr Pisoni: Tell us how much it costs, then.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: We will, member for Unley, once the contract is signed and we have the details.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: It is acute conceit to ask us to tell the price of something before it is completed and before it is finalised. Once it is finalised, we are absolutely committed to giving all of the detail to the house, and then we will work out where the egg is placed.

I just need to make one other point, which was not included in any of the questions asked by the opposition. The reality is that, during the last election campaign, the Liberal Party said that they would rebuild the RAH on the existing site. When asked how they were going to fund that, they said they were going to do it through a public-private partnership arrangement. The deputy leader of the time, the member for Hammond, at 7.30 on the eve of the election, said—and this was an interview, and the question was, 'But you're only spending a fraction on some of your major commitments: $10 million for the redevelopment of the Royal Adelaide Hospital over the next four years,' to which the then deputy responded:

That's important to emphasise. That will be a public-private partnership as the Labor Party proposal is for a public-private partnership.

So, if the Liberal Party won office at the last election and were to have built the RAH on the existing site, they would have had it built using a public-private partnership, the exact same device that we are using. The hypocrisy smells. You can smell the hypocrisy from over here.

An honourable member: It wasn't the member for Hammond.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: I said the member for Hammond. My apologies to the member for Hammond. He would not have made such an error. The member for Goyder.

Mr Pengilly interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, the member for Finniss!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: The member for Goyder told the truth. That is the problem for him.

The SPEAKER: Order!

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