Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in Boothby to announce Flinders HealthCARE Centre

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will target an Adelaide marginal seat by announcing millions for one of the city’s largest centres.

An early design of the Flinders HealthCARE Centre proposal. Picture: Supplied

A $300m health service for Adelaide’s south, providing up to 10,000 extra appointments and training 1300 staff annually, will be kickstarted on Tuesday by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

Targeting the Adelaide marginal seat of Boothby on the election campaign’s fifth day, Mr Albanese will announce a re-elected Labor government will spend $150m on a Flinders HealthCARE Centre.

Flinders University, which would match the funding, is touting the centre as transforming health care in southern Adelaide.

In another sign of federal Labor’s bid to leverage Premier Peter Malinauskas’s popularity, Mr Albanese said his government was “working with the Malinauskas Labor government to build South Australia’s future”.

The 10-storey centre, in Bedford Park’s Flinders Health Precinct, will include three floors of clinical space able to treat 100 patients simultaneously.

Research and training facilities will enable Flinders University to produce an extra 1300 work-ready graduates annually, including more than 490 nurses, 250 social workers, 101 paramedics and 128 occupational therapists and speech pathologists.

Mr Albanese linked the Flinders centre funding to Labor “strengthening Medicare”, touting “the largest-ever investment in more than 40 years”.

“This means more free trips to the doctor, cheaper medicines and more urgent care clinics – where all you need is your Medicare card not your credit card,” he said.

Labor’s Louise Miller-Frost holds the southwestern Adelaide seat of Boothby by 3.3 per cent – the ALP’s most marginal in SA – and is facing a Liberal challenge from previous incumbent Nicolle Flint.

The two-stage Flinders University plan was accidentally revealed in February by Mitcham Council, which published a detailed description on its website but removed the document when the university explained it was provided confidentially.

The $150m is expected to be explained as a decision of government, that will be reflected in the 2025 Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook.

Design and development is expected to start later this year, with Flinders University hoping to start construction in 2027.

The 10-storey centre, in Bedford Park’s Flinders Health Precinct, will include three floors of clinical space able to treat 100 patients simultaneously. Picture: Supplied

Mr Malinauskas said the centre would help “deliver the highly skilled workers needed to staff our growing hospital system”.

“Nurses, midwives, ambos, speech pathologists, physios, psychologists, and other health professionals — this means more of them, trained in world-class facilities,” he said.

“It also means up to 10,000 additional appointments each year for patients in the south, to be undertaken at the new Flinders facility.”

Flinders University vice-chancellor Colin Stirling said the centre would be “a game-changer for our community, delivering better care, faster access, and a stronger health workforce”.

“For over 50 years, Flinders has led the way as Australia’s first university embedded in a public hospital. Our $150 million investment, matched by the federal government, cements that legacy, delivering world-class care and training for generations to come,” Professor Stirling said.

Opposition health spokeswoman Anne Ruston on Monday morning, asked about the ongoing drought, said the Coalition wanted “to focus on making sure that we’ve got doctors and nurses and frontline workers in our health sector in rural and regional Australia”, arguing Labor policies had “only made that worse”.

Originally published as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in Boothby to announce Flinders HealthCARE Centre