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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-11-13 Daily Xml
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New Women's and Children's Hospital

Mrs HURN (Schubert) (14:43): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Has the minister requested an update on the forecast cost and completion date of the new Women's and Children's Hospital following the Auditor-General's Report No. 9 into state finances? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mrs HURN: The Auditor General's Report highlights this year's budget's observation that, and I quote:

…labour shortages across different construction trade skills continue and are not expected to ease in the short term, resulting in longer project completion time frames and some increased costs.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:44): I thank the member for her question. I speak very regularly with our team who are working on the new Women's and Children's Hospital. I think as late as last week I had my last update with them, and the answer is very similar to our last sitting week or the sitting week before when questions were asked about this matter.

We are certainly confident in terms of the 2031 construction completion timeline. The team are working very well to that. You only have to drive down Port Road to see the significant amount of construction that is already taking place on that site. The stage 2 architecture team has been working very well with our clinicians on the planning for the next stage of works. We are certainly very happy in terms of the progress to date.

In terms of the cost of the project, the answer is the same as previously as well, that we have a budget—$3.2 billion—but we know that there is pressure in terms of construction costs right across the world, and we are obviously working through that. We have not reached the stage of signing construction contracts for this project yet—that is likely to happen mid to late next year—but we are obviously working to try to make sure that we can balance to get the best outcome for taxpayers and ultimately to make sure that we can get the best outcome for women and children in this state. This is going to have to be a building that stands the test of time for decades and decades to come—

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: A century.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —if not a century, as the Treasurer says. We need to make sure that it delivers the best possible outcome. So we are balancing all of those things, and we will do so throughout the final procurement process for this project. Of course, we did take the difficult decision when we came to government to move the site of that project, which is now allowing us to build a hospital that is going to be set up for the future. It is going to be bigger.

It is going to have a broader range of critical health services in it—such as additional pathology, such as a sterilisation unit, such as a helipad—which were not part of the previous design, where we were trying to squish a very small floor plate to fit a whole range of different things on it. That basically led to this project, between successive Labor and Liberal governments, seeing no progress take place for about a decade. Well, progress is now happening. This is a project that is going to deliver for women and children for many, many decades to come, and we are really excited about what this is going to deliver.

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