27 September 2024

Liberals say if they can the tram they can move Northside Hospital up the infrastructure priority list

| Ian Bushnell
Join the conversation
20
hospital artist's impression

An indicative render of the proposed Northside Hospital. The Canberra Liberals have promised a start construction in their first term. Image: ACT Government.

The Canberra Liberals have promised to start construction of the planned Northside Hospital at Bruce in their first term if they win government on 19 October.

The hospital project, which Labor says would cost at least $1 billion and is due to begin mid-decade, joins the city stadium ($800 million) and convention centre ($760 million) that the Liberals have also slated for a start in their first term.

But health spokesperson Leanne Castley said not proceeding with light rail Stage 2B, which she said Chief Minister Andrew Barr had called Canberra’s biggest ever infrastructure project, would free up the labour and resources necessary to deliver the hospital faster and run three major projects at once.

Ms Castley said peak bodies such as the Master Builders Association had assured the Liberals that they could supply the workers if they had the certainty that these projects were going ahead.

She said not proceeding with light rail would also help a Liberal Government manage the costs.

“We’re not building a $4 billion tram; we don’t have to factor that in,” she said.

A Liberal government would also consider public-private partnerships for the convention centre and stadium.

“Those things absolutely come at a cost, but they will be bringing money into the ACT as well,” she said.

The Canberra Liberals have also recommitted to a royal commission into the ACT health system in their first year of government, which Ms Castley said could cost about $12 million.

She said that without a royal commission, it would be difficult to understand the depth of the problems with the health system.

“For years and years, the health system has been in decline and, some will say, a crisis,” she said.

A royal commission would look at the workplace culture, staffing and resourcing and how to support frontline workers.

Opposition Leader Elizabeth Lee and health spokesperson Leanne Castley at Canberra Hospital: “I want our frontline workers to know that the Canberra levels respect them, that we have their back.” Photo: Ian Bushnell.

Ms Castley said the key was the workforce and culture, saying that despite many surveys over many years, there had not been any improvement.

She would introduce an annual culture survey, but “the difference is I want our frontline workers to tell us the truth”.

“They fear retribution. They are boycotting the current surveys.

“If ever I have the honour of being the health minister, I want our frontline workers to know that the Canberra Liberals respect them, that we have their back and that we’re listening, and that’s where these policies have come from.”

A Liberal Government would also boost training and wellbeing support for doctors.

This includes increased education allowances and protected training time for registrars and senior registrars for five hours a week as part of the medical officers’ Enterprise Bargaining Agreement.

The Liberals would also commit $120,000 to DRs4Drs, a confidential mental health support service for doctors and medical students, to support those struggling with fatigue, burnout, bullying and anxiety.

While Ms Castley would not commit to a pay rise for striking doctors, she said a Liberal government would negotiate with them, “not force them into a situation where they have to take industrial action against their own government, their own employer to pay them adequately”.

“They need to be paid what they are worth, and that’s part of the negotiation,” Ms Castley said.

“I know they were very unhappy with the EBA, and so we will commit to having that conversation with them.”

Ms Castley pledged to deal with staff shortages across the system, saying that although Labor had promised 800 new health workers, there was no detail of what that actually meant.

“We’re committed to nurse-to-patient ratios and to making sure that we have enough doctors across the health system,” she said.

“We’re committed to making sure that the hospital can run and that we have adequate staff, surgeons, whatever it takes to make Canberra the best health system that we can.”

The Liberals also committed to providing affordable housing for key workers such as nurses and midwives and building a multi-story car park at the Canberra Hospital, both of which Labor supports.

READ ALSO Time to stop digging: The ACT can’t afford to ignore the first rule of holes

A Labor spokesperson said not proceeding with light rail Stage 2B would not expedite the hospital project because the infrastructure program was very busy until 2028. Light rail 2B construction was not proposed until after that.

Chief Minister Andrew Barr welcomed the Liberals “about face” on the Northside Hospital project after their previous opposition to it.

Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith said a royal commission would be costly, time-consuming and cause unnecessary distress for the health workforce.

“We need to be addressing the challenges that exist now and taking action,” she said.

“Throughout this term of government, we have worked closely with unions, professional bodies, and the workforce to better understand cultural issues and drive change, as informed by the 2018 culture review.

Ms Stephen-Smith said this work has improved the culture across Canberra Health Services, as shown in results from independent culture surveys and medical training surveys.

She said a re-elected Labor Government would continue investing in more support and development opportunities for the health workforce.

Join the conversation

20
All Comments
  • All Comments
  • Website Comments
LatestOldest

I am always amazed at the hypocrisy of the Liberals when making announcements using backdrops which have been built by Labor. Projects which have been criticised by the party who promised to cancel them should they win government! These include the Cotter Dam expansion at the time John Howard promised to divert the ACT’s water supply to NSW, the National Arboretum, the Light rail project and hospital extensions.

The Liberals have opposed the hospital ED expansion and the new Northside Hospital promised by Labor. Leanne Castley made two policy announcements outside the ED doors only last week with the party’s leader Elizabeth Lee re-emerging from hiding and standing meekly behind her. Claiming the party will support Northside’s expansion, she was light on detail only promising to look at the plans!

The Liberal party has been whingeing about the LRN over four elections. Their campaigning for this year’s election began with leader Elizabeth Lee and her transport spokesperson, funny man Mark Parton, all fakery and smiles, standing at the light rail intersection in Civic. Criticising Labor they promised to cancel the project at Commonwealth Park offering the same bus only transport plan they proposed at previous elections. Again, their policy has been criticised for not taking account of the city’s future growth offering a transport option that is unable to make down Commonwealth Avenue, over its bridge and on to Woden!

At the last election, then party leader Alistair Coe used the National Arboretum to launch his campaign. Praising the facility as a great Canberra landmark, he did not mention Labor’s role in building it nor his and his party’s vehement opposition. Zed Seselja, Jeremy Hanson and Brendan Smyth and their supporters put up every obstacle they could, promising to cancel the project should they win government!

I have no problems with building a new hospital on the north side, as the Libs bus plan is very reasonable. If only the libs would prioritize a solution to the problem of lack of GP bulk-billing, over hospital building.

Maybe if they paid the jr doctors it wouldn’t be such an issue. Labor have just been sued for underpaying jr doctors

Because we can’t have good public transport AND good health care, can we? Can only have one.

When the proposed public transport comes with the price tag for the next stage, that is unfortunately the choice facing Canberra.

Labor proved it with their 2016 campaign where they said we could have both light rail and a hospital. In the 8 years since they’ve added to Canberra hospital, but haven’t built a new one and our health outcomes still see us ranked last in the country by the AMA. Rather than the spruiked continuous construction of the light rail network, we got a 5 year gap in construction and they’re going to take 4 years to add a measly 1.7km extension.

Since when was tram good public transport.

Fewer people catch public transport than used too. Popular routes are cancelled etc.

Light rail was used as a vehicle for centralised redevelopment at the expense of the rest of the city. There was no public transport business case as it relied on scrapping of buses elsewhere

They should change their party name, how about “Canbeera Pinochios” or “Canberra Fiberals”

Andrew Barr in his budgets has broken over 100 promises to Canberra. You might want to turn your gaze closer to home.

I need to take my shoes off the count past 10. My shoes have been off for years and I do not doubt it would be a significant number. My personal take is the self-government model has never been fit for purpose, except maybe for giving quite well paid jobs to some quite ordinary people.

Finance 6'5" Blue Eyes8:57 am 28 Sep 24

So let’s get this straight, for 15 years Southside has been paying for all of Northside’s big infrastructure projects; now, when Southside is finally going to get it’s turn, liberals want to can it and build more infrastructure on Northside?!?! It’s actually outrageous! If you’re going to govern, that means fairly distributing the wealth, not giving it to the same people over and over again!!!

The Liberals have been locked into the northside hospital plan by Labor’s takeover of Calvary. At least by building it, some of the patients seeking treatment at Woden hospital would stay on the northside and there would be more capacity at Woden to look after southsiders.

Actually Garfield, even if the Calvary takeover hadn’t occurred, there was still a need to upgrade that hospital and a plan to build another hospital at Gungahlin. It would have taken about the same level of funding to do both. Calvary was too small to meet the population needs of that side of town. The building needed major work (for example, it lost accreditation to deliver cancer treatments because the Zita Mary clinic was in a building too old to retrofit it for modern equipment; the 2022 fire in one of the theatres exposed major problems with ventilation; and that doesn’t even factor in how often that hospital was on by-pass – refusing to take its share of ambulance patients). Even the church acknowledged it needed a major injection of funding. Their submission when they tried to challenge the takeover said they could do the upgrade if the government gave them hundreds of millions of dollars (what other public funding exercise of that size happens without going to tender?). The money to get hospital facilities on the north to match those on the south is simply not an election slush fund for political games.

I am not sure about all this Northside/Southside nonsense focusing on which side of town is getting more than the other Finance! ALL Canberra residents and those in NSW have benefited from the expansion of the Canberra Hospital in Woden and its recently opened ED emergency department, with construction currently underway on further development. There is also the expansion of light rail to Woden being planned and construction of a new bus depot at its Town Centre. The new state of the art CIT campus is expected to be completed next year.

Plans to develop the run-down Northside hospital are well past time and have been in the pipeline for a number of years now. Northside Hospital’s predecessor, the run-down, privately owned and taxpayer funded Catholic hospital Calvary, run by the Little Company of Mary, dilly dallied around for too long in upgrading its facilities with taxpayers footing its enormous bills. There were only two operating theatres out of six functioning at the time!

I am not sure what your problem is!

megsy, not saying it is a political slush fund. Just letting Finance6’5″ know that the Libs couldn’t examine other options given he was criticising them for their plan to do the same as the government re the new hospital location.

Finance 6'5" Blue Eyes4:37 pm 02 Oct 24

Same plan, different timeline. Totally messed up the program of works for the area just to buy more Northside votes

The Liberals annoy me by consistently overstating the cost of the Light Rail. Jeremy Hanson said stage one would cost 3 billion, but it was actually under $800k. By that reckoning stage 2B will be under $1.5 billion. Paid for over decades.

I think you’ll find the $3b figure was the Libs initial estimate of the cost for stage 2, not claims re the cost of stage 1. The full cost of stage 1 is $1.78b to the contractor over 20 years, plus hundreds of millions of interest on the funds borrowed plus undisclosed amounts for preliminary work carried out by the ACT government. On average, it’s easily more than $100m p.a. for 20 years. For interest, the total cost to subsidise the bus system for all of Canberra prior to stage 1 was about $120m p.a.

Back to stage 2. According to the Guardian online newspaper in May this year, the estimated mid range cost of the next stage of Gold Coast light rail is around $4.5b. Taking that figure and applying it the shorter 2B route here and then adding enough money to build a reinforced bridge over the lake makes a reasonable estimate for the cost of stage 2B around $4b.

We know that stage 2A is costing $577m for construction, but that doesn’t include a whole host of other costs incurred because of the extension, like raising London Cct and retrofitting the existing fleet for wireless operation. The Libs calculated the full cost as $1.46b as spelled out in this article:
https://the-riotact.com/liberals-claim-true-costs-of-light-rail-stage-2a-three-times-what-was-promised-figure-rubbished-by-govt/754595

So all up, it looks to me like the ACT taxpayer would be on the hook for $5b+ to build stage 2 all the way to Woden, and it would actually provide slower public transport between Woden and the City than the buses, encouraging more people to use their cars.

The hundreds of millions of interest for Stage 1 is an expense for the contracted party isn’t it – that would be built in to the $1.78b figure. After all they financed the bill upfront (noting the ACT Government also made a significant upfront contribution after asset sales).

I’m ignoring here the broader fact of ACT Government borrowing to do all sorts of things (i.e. to fund the overall deficit).

Yes all good but will they honour Labors continual promises for the New Ice skating Rink promised in 2016 & 2020 as well as the Southside Hydrotherapy Pool promised in 2020

Considering the Ice Rink was up high on the list of the Labor Election brochure my mum got, you’d think the candidates would be promoting the rink vigorously.

Talk to a Brindabella candidate at a shopping centre about the World class ice and indoor climbing facility and watch them tread very softly around their repeatedly failed promise.

Daily Digest

Want the best Canberra news delivered daily? Every day we package the most popular Riotact stories and send them straight to your inbox. Sign-up now for trusted local news that will never be behind a paywall.

By submitting your email address you are agreeing to Region Group's terms and conditions and privacy policy.