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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-07-31 Daily Xml
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Women's and Children's Hospital

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Leader of the Opposition) (15:20): My questions are to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing:

1. Will the minister advise what the current costings advice is for the new proposed women's and children's hospital?

2. Is the expected publicised $1.8 billion cost for the new women's and children's hospital to be fully reflected in this year's state budget?

3. What sites are under consideration for the new women's and children's hospital?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (15:20): I thank the honourable member for his question. Perhaps the first cost for the women's and children's hospital I might refer to is Labor's costing. In October 2013, leading up to the 2014 election, the Labor Party told the people of South Australia that they were going to build a new women's and children's hospital alongside the new RAH at a cost of $600,000—

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway: $600 million.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: —$600 million, sorry; even that would have defied logic. So, at a cost of $600 million and they would do it by 2023. Two years later, after the election, as part of Labor's Transforming Health initiative, they promised that they were going to fast-track the project so that improvements in the care of women and children could be delivered even sooner. In 2017, Labor broke its promise to the South Australian community when it announced that it was going to build two hospitals, leaving the children's hospital stranded in North Adelaide for an indeterminate period.

In 2018, after the election, Labor claimed that the cost would be more than $2.5 billion. That was a public statement by the Leader of the Opposition after the 2018 election. One's got to ask: why did he say that? We now know from the work of The Advertiser that there was a briefing provided to him in early February that suggested a price of $1.8 billion. There have been subsequent articles in The Advertiser which have talked about options. I don't have access to either of these documents, so I don't know the date of the options paper, but the report suggests that it was produced before the March election.

I think Labor has to answer some very pertinent questions: why are they continuing to mislead the people of South Australia by promises that they never keep, and costs that run up and down the scale without any rhyme or reason. So what have I done? What I have done is honoured the commitment that the Liberal Party made—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. S.G. WADE: —to the people of South Australia by establishing a task force to look at options. Mr Jim Birch—sorry, I think he might be Dr Jim Birch but, anyway, certainly illustrious. In many circles in Adelaide, he is already known as 'Saint Jim Birch' because he is held in such high esteem. He is leading a 15-person task force, which has been established to drive the project and develop a fully-costed plan with a view to achieving build completion by 2024.

The first meeting of that task force was held in early June, and there are five reference groups providing high-level advice. The task force will identify the capital cost of the project, the number of inpatient beds required and the statewide models of care required to support the hospital's day-to-day operations. Let me just remind the house why it is so important that we tackle this project. What the former Labor government did was, in 2017, to abandon the idea of a co-located women's and children's hospital in the NRAH precinct, and what would that have meant? If they had stumbled back into government this time, that would have meant that we would have had two separate builds, the women's hospital at the NRAH site, and the children's hospital at the North Adelaide site.

What we will continue to have is a situation where, in an emergency, gravely ill children will need to be flown to the Royal Adelaide as part of any medical retrieval and then transferred to the Women's and Children's Hospital by ambulance. That is a significant risk to children. In that context, I would remind honourable members of a statement by the Australian Medical Association. They said that they don't support Labor's plans because they are concerned that Labor's plans—and I quote—'will leave very sick neonates without on-site access to vital subspecialty medical and surgical services, specialised radiology and laboratory investigations.'

The second element for why Labor's plan would be so dangerous for the people of South Australia is for women. If the former Labor government had been re-elected and was implementing its plan, we would have a situation where sick mothers would be separated from sick babies. Having the women's and children's hospital next to the RAH would end the practice of separating seriously ill mothers from their newborn children and transferring them to another hospital for adult intensive care services.

So I, like other members on this side of the house, and I know from the crossbench, are looking forward to Jim Birch's task force report. It is due by the end of the year, and we look forward to seeing all the options, all the costings, and following through on an important commitment to the people of South Australia, particularly to women, children and babies.

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