NT’s budget crisis is also the fault of the Feds

Pandering to voters with the construction of the Palmerston Regional Hospital instead of focusing on actual community needs has landed us in a budget crisis, and Dave Tollner was the only politician to call out the insanity writes MATT CUNNINGHAM.

THE perfect storm finally struck last week.

The collision of two events that woke us to a fundamental problem we have here in the Territory.

As the patients piled up at the overwhelmed Royal Darwin Hospital, forcing the cancellation of elective surgeries and placing the already overworked staff under more pressure than usual, we learnt the almost-broke NT Government had just handed $12 million to the Darwin Turf Club to build a new grandstand.

The optics were terrible.

Here was our government crying poor to Canberra over hospital funding while handing over millions for an upgraded view at the races.

As has been the norm for this government, it was Health Minister and Attorney-General Natasha Fyles who was sent out to try to defend the indefensible.

But it would be unfair to blame this one project — or, for that matter — this one government for the mess we find ourselves in today.

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The Turf Club’s grandstand is copping the heat because its timing is bad.

But we could just as easily point the finger at the $18 million Darwin International Tennis Centre — still with sloping centre court making it unable to host top level events.

Or the $18 million indoor netball centre — built next to the relatively new outdoor netball centre for a sport played mostly at night during the dry season.

Or the $19 million underground car park at State Square.

All “job creating projects”, we are told, but that work lasts only as long as the project takes to complete, then the jobs are gone and so is the money.

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That’s not to say we shouldn’t build things or attempt to stimulate our struggling economy.

But you have to wonder about the cost-benefit analysis of many of these projects.

How many top level netball games will be played at our new indoor stadium and will that be worth it if we can’t afford to turn the air-conditioning on for the rest of the year?

What’s the economic benefit of shifting 400 car parks underground when our population is falling?

Do we need an international tennis centre when our main hospital can’t cope with demand?

And that’s before we even broach the long-held concern that Territory governments spend their money where the votes are, rather than where the need exists.

Which brings us to la piece de resistance in this show: the Palmerston Regional Hospital.

Bizarrely, as the bed-blocked Royal Darwin Hospital hit 140 per cent capacity last week the Palmerston hospital was suggested as a possible solution to this crisis.

Those who work within the Top End health system know it’s actually a large part of the problem.

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We spent more than $200 million building the Palmerston hospital thanks to a years-long game of one-upmanship between both the major parties at a federal and Territory level.

The goal in this game was never to deliver the best level of care, but to win over the swinging voters in the federal seat of Solomon and the NT seats of Brennan and Drysdale.

Now we’re seeing the consequences of those decisions.

The opening of the PRH last August has led to a duplication in some services, increasing costs.

The Government has been unable to say how much more it’s costing to run the PRH but you can guarantee it’s a lot more than the $25 million allocated in the budget.

Palmerston hospital’s opening has meant our already overworked staff have had to spread themselves across two facilities.

It’s seen wards shut down at RDH as some patients have been shifted to Palmerston, and as we saw this week, we now no longer have the ability to use those wards when the pressure builds at RDH.

A series of non-sensical promises has meant the Palmerston hospital is caught in no-man’s land when it comes to the delivery of services.

It has an emergency department (not part of the original plan) but is unable to cater for those with the most critical needs.

Over three years we will spend $5 million ferrying patients who present at Palmerston to RDH.

It’s true spending $200 million on a hospital is money better spent than on car parks or tennis courts.

But where was the planning and policy framework to back up this decision? There was none, it was pure politics.

If this money had instead been spent upgrading RDH we wouldn’t be in the mess we find ourselves in today.

The NT Government is now putting its hand out to Canberra to try to extract us from this crisis.

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This overused argument would usually deserve little sympathy, particularly when our relative GST funding is so much higher than any other state or territory.

But in this case, Canberra and the Coalition have been equal and willing partners in creating the mess, so it is only fair they bear equal responsibility for fixing it.

In the past decade the only politician of either persuasion with the intestinal fortitude to call out the insanity of the Palmerston hospital was former CLP health minister and treasurer Dave Tollner.

As our hospital system plunged into crisis last week Tollner might have afforded himself one of his famous chuckles.

But this situation is no laughing matter.