Page 2137 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 5 June 2019
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health budget. Mr Stanhope stated in his opening remarks that when he left office in 2011 his government had provided money for necessary infrastructure to meet our growing health needs. However, subsequent Labor governments have decided to spend that money on other things.
In 2015 KPMG developed a case for a $1.2 billion redevelopment of the Canberra Hospital. The business case warned that the ageing buildings were in desperate need of upgrades. Cabinet did not agree with the proposal put forward at the time, and nothing was done. As part of the 2016-17 budget the government received a report from an engineering firm, AECOM, which revealed that there were four extreme and 143 high risks in the Canberra Hospital infrastructure. Cabinet approved a program called UMAHA on the back of this AECOM report. It is interesting to note the lengths that the people of Canberra had to go through, via the work of the Canberra Liberals, to get that document out into the open.
Recently I received an answer to a question on notice which showed that the UMAHA program was behind schedule and well over budget. An example, an issue that has received some coverage, is the hospital switchboard upgrade for buildings 2 and 12, which were known to be at risk for some time and one of which was the cause of the fire in April 2017. The cost of the upgrade has grown from $14 million to $42 million, a tripling in the cost. It was forecast to be finished in September 2018 but is not finished and will not be finished until the end of this year.
On the eve of the 2016 election, Ms Fitzharris announced the SPIRE project, at a predicted cost of $500 million. No feasibility study, planning or early design work was done before SPIRE was announced. I have said in the past that it looked like a project drawn on the back of a drink coaster. Last year the minister announced that SPIRE would have to be moved to another site because the drink coaster was not big enough to accommodate the helipad and the car park on the proposed site of SPIRE. Now the drink coaster has been turned into a two-volume novel, introducing significant changes to the scope of the project. This is because the original drink coaster proposal failed to consider the future, with SPIRE facilities reaching their capacity almost before the building would have been finished. This shows why planning is important and why there needs to be transparency, which is the thrust of my motion.
On 4 May 2019 the acting director-general of Health sent a brief to the minister. It noted:
… the Strategic Asset Management Plans (SAMP) recently completed in February 2018 for the Canberra Hospital and Community and Other Assets, identifies critical assets which are at the end of their useful life.
The acting director-general of Health then stated:
… the draft Calvary SAMP shows an aged infrastructure profile.
To add to this, the former Chief Minister, Ms Gallagher, and Dr John Merchant prepared a discussion paper in relation to Calvary Hospital infrastructure in July last year. Ms Gallagher and Dr Merchant noted:
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