Page 2735 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 13 August 2019
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ACT Labor was hanging its hat on a Shorten Labor government coming to power at the federal election in May and that being the saviour for all the Labor-Greens government’s infrastructure woes. It soon became clear that there would be a Morrison-led government in power across the lake, for the next three years at least, and the ACT government realised that it needed to take responsibility after all. And so it began the work to create the major projects agency.
ACT Health was first contacted about the major projects agency on 5 June, verbally, and was contacted by email the next day. The day after the budget came down, the concept of the major projects agency was being launched with ACT Health. However, that did not go all the way. ACT Health was told that SPIRE, the largest capital works project in the health budget, would be transferred to the major projects initiative. The CEO of Canberra Health Services, who will be running SPIRE when it is built, was not contacted until 18 June, nearly a fortnight later, and only after the media had published the story about the establishment of the major projects initiative and that SPIRE would be the first project. Canberra Health Services were kept out of the loop both by the major projects team and by the ACT Health Directorate.
It confirms my fears that Canberra Health Services are being excluded from the decision-making process in relation to SPIRE. It is especially irksome in the case of SPIRE, because this project will have a significant impact on Canberra Health Services’ ability to deliver front-line health services from day one of the project. Doctors, nurses and other health professionals, it seems to me, will have very little say in how SPIRE is developed. This government considers that the unions are more important than Canberra Health Services, because they were the first to be consulted on the communications plan, long before Canberra Health Services.
As at 11 June there was only one person working full time on the SPIRE project in ACT Health: one person for something which is now approaching a half-billion dollar project and which is supposed to be delivered in a fairly tight time frame. It has been said that it will be very difficult for the ACT government to actually deliver in this time frame. There was no-one at all working on SPIRE in the infrastructure and capital works area of Treasury.
What I said before about this project being developed on the back of a drinks coaster has been really and truly confirmed. It was on the back of a drinks coaster because there is no room for more than one person at a time to write on the back of a drinks coaster, and that is what has been happening in ACT Health and the ACT bureaucracy generally.
We have to remember that SPIRE was developed as a “me too” response to the Canberra Liberals’ 2016 election commitment to redevelop buildings 2 and 3 on the hospital campus. It was a response that started off with the then Minister for Health saying, “We don’t need this new development and we won’t need it for at least 10 years.” We do know that the ACT government were bleeding over the whole issue of health infrastructure during the last election, so they hurriedly pulled together this project, which will not be delivered for 10 years, beyond the commitment. That means that Mr Corbell will be proved right.
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