http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/...k=3ec568cacf5c1f248dfac29054db5b29-1480166691
Chris Kenny: The new Royal Adelaide Hospital is overdue, over budget, overblown and under a cloud
Chris Kenny, Sunday Mail (SA)
November 26, 2016 9:30pm
Subscriber only
IT is one of the world’s most expensive buildings and it sits there, shiny, new and empty, like a costly monument to government incompetence.
The new Royal Adelaide Hospital is overdue, over budget, overblown and under a cloud.
It is a national embarrassment, an insult to taxpayers and a tantalising frustration to doctors, nurses and their patients.
It looks set to help more lawyers than patients in the coming year; a project that so far has created work for bankers but not medicos.
The whole saga is worthy of a malpractice suit. The hospital has been highly controversial and political right from the outset.
Remember, the Liberals promised to upgrade the existing hospital on the current site – the orthodox, less risky and cheaper option – but former premier Mike Rann wanted a grand new project.
He promised and we got it. Now the unfolding legal, administrative, political, medical and financial shambles is for Health Minister Jack Snelling to sort out.
Whenever politicians make grand promises anywhere, we need to be very wary. It is our money they are planning to build their dreams on; and they often get it wrong.
But, in South Australia especially, we have a long history of “visionary plans” that have turned into thwarted dreams that have left only public debts.
Whether it was the satellite city of Monarto, the Multi-Function Polis or the grand financial empire of the State Bank and Beneficial Finance Corporation, taxpayers’ money often has been wagered on massive, losing gambles.
If “expensive clothing is a poor man’s attempt to appear prosperous” – as South African wit Mokokoma Mokhonoana says – then South Australia has made many attempts to disguise its parlous economic situation with fancy projects that make us appear prosperous.
The most expensive shopping centre, most expensive submarines, most expensive stadium upgrade, most expensive electricity prices and, now, most expensive hospital.
Some of us with long memories might get a little angry about this sort of profligacy and mismanagement.
In the State Bank years, SA taxpayers dropped a billion dollars on the Myer-Remm shopping centre (complete with roller-coaster), $300 million on Melbourne’s fanciest office block at 333 Collins St, and up to $100 million on an experimental timber fabrication technology called Scrimber that delivered only the world’s most expensive warehouse at Mount Gambier.
Politicians, our money and grand plans provide a fateful mix.
And so we are left with a hospital that made the list of the world’s most expensive buildings – ever – and it will sit there, costing a bomb at $2.5 billion or more, for a year after it was due to open – without patients.
The original hospital, starved of an upgrade, will have to continue carrying the load.
And the government and the builders do battle through their lawyers. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
In fact, that brilliant old BBC series
Yes, Minister did make this up 35 years ago and it all seemed so hilarious and far-fetched that it could never be true.
Minister Jim Hacker received an update from his private secretary Bernard Woolley, who had been checking out a tip-off about an empty hospital.
Wooley was pleased to report it was not empty after all. “Well, in fact, there are only 342 administrative staff at the new St Edwards hospital, the other 170 are porters, cleaners, laundry workers, cooks, gardeners and so on,” said the relieved secretary.
“How many medical staff?” asked Minister Hacker.
“Oh, none of them,” replied Woolley. “It’s brand new, was completed 15 months ago and is fully staffed but unfortunately at that time there were government cutbacks so, consequently, there was no money left for medical services.”
“A brand new hospital with over 500 non-medical staff and no patients?!” said the astonished Snelling, err, I mean Hacker.
“Oh, there is one patient,” Woolley replied sheepishly. “The deputy chief administrator fell over a piece of scaffolding and broke his leg.”
It is such an absurd joke, and SA is living it.
Taxpayers, already hard hit by high state taxes, high electricity prices, high water charges and high unemployment, are funding a state-of-the-art new hospital without patients.
You have to wonder when the public’s patience will run out.