Ballina is trapped in a health planning paradox, with no hospital site, no construction funding and no clear investment pathway, according to independent candidate for Ballina and local mayor Sharon Cadwallader.
‘Ballina has been totally left in the lurch by the NSW Greens, who have represented us in Parliament for the past 12 years and done nothing to understand the hospital issue for Ballina, which has been revealed today as a full-blown crisis,’ Cr Cadwallader said.
The NSW Auditor-General’s report into hospital infrastructure was released yesterday.
‘The Auditor-General has exposed a shambles in the way NSW Health plans, prioritises and funds hospital infrastructure,’ Cr Cadwallader said. ‘For Ballina, this is devastating news. We already know we need a new hospital, but we have no site, no construction funding and no timetable.
‘Now we discover the statewide system responsible for deciding where hospitals should be built cannot even demonstrate that funding is going to the communities with the greatest need.’
Serious deficiencies
She says the Auditor-General’s report, Health Capital Expenditure and Infrastructure Delivery, identifies serious deficiencies in the Labor government’s approach:
- No transparent prioritisation: NSW Health cannot demonstrate that capital investment is directed to infrastructure most needed to meet future demand.
- Budgets before business cases: All four projects examined received budgets before business cases were completed.
- Hospitals delivered incomplete: Clinical facilities can be reduced, deferred or left unfinished to meet approved budgets.
- No statewide accounting of unfinished facilities: NSW Health does not know how many unfinished clinical spaces exist or when they will become operational.
- Insufficient operating funding: New facilities may lack the funding needed to staff and operate them at intended capacity.
- No proper evaluation of results: NSW Health cannot demonstrate that completed projects deliver the benefits originally promised.
Health planning paradox
‘These are extraordinary findings involving billions of dollars in public expenditure,’ Cr Cadwallader said. ‘Ballina is trapped in what I call the Health Planning Paradox.
‘NSW Health has already determined that flood risk makes redevelopment of our existing hospital site unviable. Its preferred long-term solution is a new hospital on a greenfield site. Yet NSW Health has not secured a new site.
‘Ballina is a growing community with increasing demand for hospital services. We cannot simply keep transferring the burden to Lismore Base Hospital, which has its own growing demand and service pressures,’ said Cr Cadwallader.
‘NSW Health knows Ballina needs a long-term solution, but we are still being asked to participate in another planning exercise that will not identify a hospital site or deliver a funding commitment.
‘We have a hospital that cannot be redeveloped where it is, a replacement that has nowhere to be built, and a planning process that cannot tell us when anything will happen.’
Where is the investment pathway?
The NSW Government allocated $2 million to Ballina Hospital redevelopment planning in 2022–23. The project remained in Health Infrastructure’s capital program under project number P56956, but there is still no publicly identified construction allocation or confirmed replacement site.
‘The Auditor-General’s findings raise the frightening possibility that Ballina will be pushed onto the never-never while the government struggles to complete projects already under construction.
‘NSW has committed $11.9 billion to health infrastructure over four years, yet the Auditor-General says NSW Health cannot demonstrate that investment is being prioritised according to future health needs. Where does that leave Ballina?
‘We appear to have no clear investment pathway through a system the Auditor-General has found to be fundamentally deficient. This cannot become another decade of planning without delivery.’
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