$9.4m hospital waste: It’s everyone else’s fault

CASSY O’CONNOR

A Decade of Labor Squandering the Good Economic Times Leaves Tasmanians without Hope for a Greenfields’ Hospital.

Cassy O’Connor MP
Greens’ Health Spokesperson
Tuesday, 19 May 2009

www.tas.greens.org.au

The Tasmanian Greens today lamented the expenditure of $9.4 million on a waterfront hospital exercise that was doomed to fail from the day former Premier Lennon announced it in 2007.

Greens Health spokesperson Cassy O’Connor MP said the Tasmanian Labor Government had broken its promise to the Tasmanian people to build a new Royal Hobart Hospital on a greenfields’ site.

“The State Labor Government has wasted years on a folly at massive expense to the taxpayer because the proposed waterfront hospital was a political process from the start. It was about politics, not people or good planning as it should have been from the outset,” Ms O’Connor said.

“Yesterday’s announcement was inevitable. Labor knew its waterfront hospital proposal was unpopular in the broader community, and rejected outright by a number of key port users.”

“In Question Time today, the Health Minister made it clear that staff and patients – current and future – at the Royal have been consigned to two decades at least in a cramped, outdated building, and that they will have to suffer the as-yet-unfunded demolition and reconstruction of H Block, with all its attendant potential health implications.”

“As a result of this government’s arrogance, it failed to consult properly with Tasmanians on the best possible site, or port users on the railyards’ option.”

“As a result of this government’s financial incompetence, over the past decade it has squandered away the good times and failed to plan for the future of the new Royal, so now there is no money available to plan and build the new hospital that was promised to Tasmanians.”

“It will be the Tasmanian community who will end up shouldering the costs of Labor’s failure to plan for, fund and commence the building of the much needed new Hobart hospital.”

“If this process had been undertaken properly from the start, fully consulted in an open and transparent manner, and if funds had been being set aside when the economic sun was shining on Tasmania, then construction of a new Royal on an appropriate greenfields’ site would be underway by now,” Ms O’Connor said.

What Tasmanian Times (always) thought: Here