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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-05-14 Daily Xml
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New Women's and Children's Hospital

Mrs HURN (Schubert) (14:39): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. When did the minister last receive advice on the project cost of the new Women's and Children's Hospital?

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:39): I continue to meet regularly with the project team, the project director, the executives overseeing the project. I am also part of various cabinet discussions that we have through various cabinet committees that have oversight of the project on a very regular basis.

In terms of the cost of the project, the budget is still $3.2 billion. But as both the Premier and I have said on a number of occasions, we know that construction costs across the world continue to be under pressure. We know that there is continued pressure on all major projects everywhere and we continue to make sure that we are doing everything we can to try to maintain that within the budget. But the contracting arrangements will be in place mid to late next year—that's when the major tenders will be finalised with construction companies—and between now and then we will do everything we can to make sure that we can keep it within that budget. Obviously, we will be doing everything we can with the main priority of making sure that we can deliver a hospital that meets the needs of women and children long into the future.

One of the key reasons we are confident about doing that is because we are doing it on this new site, which is a bigger site, which allows future expansion space, which allows us to not have one extra overnight bed as part of the hospital. That's in stark contrast to everything that we have heard from those opposite, including the shadow minister who asked me the question. When the Premier and I announced the new site, she went out and criticised that, in fact, and she said that the old site was 'stacked up ready to go' apparently. Apparently we were stacked up ready to go on construction on the old site next to the Royal Adelaide Hospital.

I don't know if you remember this guy, but health expert David Speirs—do you remember him; David Speirs used to be in here until the current member for Black came in doing an excellent job—said this was 'shovel-ready' and that 'it was shown that this site could fit the new hospital' which is exactly the opposite to what we had. We had expert advice from the Hallion review which very clearly said that that RAH West site 'significantly limits, almost extinguishes, any future expansion of the RAH—

The SPEAKER: Minister, there is a point of order.

Mr TEAGUE: Standing order 98(a). The question was: when did the minister last receive advice on the project cost? He said he is regularly receiving advice, he hasn't gone near the answer, he is now straying into completely irrelevant territory. He needs to answer the question.

The SPEAKER: The minister is halfway through his allocated time to answer the question. I am sure he is getting to that point while providing some background to this construction of the hospital.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: And this is a critical point in terms of the decision that we have made in terms of the new site of the hospital, and obviously cost is one of the impacts. We wanted to make sure that we have a hospital that meets the needs for the long term, and that's why we had the Hallion report which looked at what the options were for us in terms of delivery of this hospital and it said that building the new women's and kids' hospital on the RAH West site 'significantly limits, almost extinguishes, any future expansion of the RAH, while at the same time preventing any future expansion of the new Women's and Children's Hospital at the RAH West site'. So far from being shovel-ready, far from being able to fit on that site, far from being ready to go, according to the shadow minister, we needed to take this action to make sure that this hospital is going to meet the needs for this state long into the future.

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