Des Houghton: Why the Mater’s plan for a Springfield hospital is being ignored
The State Government has trumpeted job-creating projects in the region, but it remains a mystery why final approvals for a public hospital at Springfield are being overlooked. It could be because there are no marginal seats in the Springfield-Ipswich corridor, writes Des Houghton.
Opinion
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WHY is the State Government dithering over the final approvals for a public hospital at Springfield, Australia’s largest masterplanned community 34km south west of Brisbane?
The Mater has council approval for a $320m hospital and owns a large slice of land in Springfield’s medical precinct. Architectural drawings are complete and the project is “shovel-ready”.
While Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is promoting grandiose infrastructure projects as part of the post-covid recovery plan, the Mater’s worthy project is being ignored.
Why?
I suspect this is because there are no marginal seats in the Springfield-Ipswich corridor that need to be pork-barrelled.
It’s a different story in marginal seats like Cairns and Redlands where multi-million hospital upgrades have been promised.
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Hervey Bay got a hospital as an election sweetener in the 1992 election in which Wayne Goss’ ALP stormed back into power.
In those days Hervey Bay had less population than Springfield does now.
Caboolture hospital, likewise, came into being on the back of a 1992 election pledge.
Goss may have been channelling our most exotic premier, Joh Bjelke-Petersen.
Redlands Hospital arrived in 1983 on the back of a win by Joh’s National Party.
A public hospital at Springfield has the backing of Professor Robert Stable, a towering figure in Queensland health as a medico, a director-general and a former vice-chancellor of Bond University.
More recently he chaired Metro North Hospital and Health Service, the largest government health service in Australia employing 18,500 staff.
Stable told me the case for a hospital at Springfield was compelling because Springfield had 46,000 residents with 193,000 in the wider catchment.
Demand for hospital services would increase because Springfield is one of the fastest growing regions in the nation.
If the hospital was built on time in three years, the catchment by then would be 210,000 people.
Although the Mater has council approval for a 1200-bed hospital, it plans initially to construct a 355-bed hospital, of which 104 beds would remain unopened until required, Stable said.
The Mater also has options on large parcels of land nearby for future expansion.
The Mater already has a private hospital at Springfield, but it does not have a birthing ward or a 24-hour emergency department.
Families have to dash on clogged roads to nearby hospitals at Logan and Ipswich, or travel to the Princess Alexander or Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital in Brisbane.
A public hospital at Springfield hospital would significantly ease the pressure on those hospitals, Stable said.
“It will especially relive the emergency department at Logan which is a war zone,” he said.
There were similar pressures on the emergency department at PA hospital, he said.
The Springfield Chamber of Commerce says 1500 expectant mothers have to flee Springfield each year to have their babies elsewhere.
Some babies are born in the back of an ambulance, said chamber president, Neil Coupland.
In his appeal to Palaszczuk, Coupland cites the case of mother of three Chloe Aitken. She had troubled pregnancies previously, and had no time to rush to Ipswich or Brisbane when her latest child, Everly, decided to come into the world at 3am in the morning recently.
Fortunately the young mum delivered her baby at home with few complications.
“It’s not right that we don’t have our own hospital,” Coupland said.
“Young families like the Aitkens are at risk, and that is unacceptable.”
The chamber sees the hospital as a job creation project.
“The construction will create 800 jobs locally, and those jobs are needed more than ever,” Coupland said.
He said while the State Government was trumpeting job-creating projects, it remained a mystery why Springfield hospital was overlooked.
Once built it would serve not just Springfield but new towns like Ripley and neighbouring suburbs like Redbank Plains and Greenbank.
Stable said the new hospital with 251 operational beds will require around 1000 clinical staff. Another 400 people would be engaged as administrators, cleaners and kitchen staff. They would be on the Queensland Health payroll.
Springfield City Group chairman, Maha Sinnathamby, said the hospital would be the catalyst for growing the 122 ha “knowledge precinct” at Springfield.
“It’s three cornerstones are health, education and IT,’’ he said.
The knowledge precinct has 52ha earmarked for hospital and health services.
“Once the hospital is approved by the State Government we will go into a national and international marketing exercise.
“We want strong players to join us. We want to turbocharge this project.”
Simmathamby envisages an $8 billion “Health City” taking 25 year to construct.
A number of international groups were interested in coming to Springfield.
“Whether we do a deal with them or not, we do not know just yet.”
Sinnathamby wants to reverse what he sees as Australia’s brain drain.
“This country has lost a lot of its brainpower.’’
Top doctors were working in the US, the UK and Asia.
Many of the nation’s top IT people were working in Silicon Valley.
He wants them to come home.
“We are creating a knowledge precinct this country needs.’’
Meanwhile, the works program at Springfield was valued $700m a year, he said.
This included building 400 new homes a year, new shopping facilities and office space and the expansion of the USQ campus.
Des Houghton is a media consultant and a former editor of The Courier-Mail, the Sunday Mail and the Sunday Sun.
