This hospital will cost $700 million. There’ll be nowhere to have a baby

It’s 9am on a Thursday and Windsor Road has slowed to a crawl. Semi-trailers carry building materials to feed booming housing estates, SUVs head to the shopping centre after the school run, and tradies dip into the drive-through after a trip to Bunnings. None are going anywhere fast.

Thinking about this traffic makes Lexie Kanaley nervous. In a few months, she will have to run the Windsor Road gauntlet to Westmead Hospital, where she is due to give birth to her second child.

When Kanaley’s first son Kyson was born, the labour was quick, but the family lived in Castle Hill at the time and the commute was only 15 minutes. Now rising house prices and a desire for more space have forced the family out to Box Hill. The drive to Westmead can take more than an hour. A quick labour this time would be a nightmare.

“I’d rather be at home, but do I risk waiting and then having a baby on the side of the road? Because I really don’t want that,” Kanaley says.

Lexie Kanaley with her son Kyson at home in Box Hill. Credit: Rhett Wyman

This is the problem facing hundreds of young families moving to Sydney’s growing north-west, where houses pop up almost overnight but not the schools, hospitals and critical infrastructure to support them. The state government is building a hospital at Rouse Hill, but almost a decade after it was first promised, the site remains an empty field.

When it eventually opens in 2029, the maternity unit will not have birthing suites. The $700 million Rouse Hill Hospital will offer expectant mothers outpatient antenatal and postnatal care, but they will still have to travel to Westmead or Blacktown to give birth.

“That’s wild to me,” says Kanaley. “All of my neighbours are still having kids, and they’re not going to be able to give birth at the new hospital? Crazy.”

Every one of Kanaley’s direct neighbours is a young family who are likely to need maternity services in the next decade. The state’s planning department expects an additional 200,000 people to live in the Hills Shire and Blacktown local government areas by 2041, and the hospital site borders the high-density housing zones around the Bella Vista and Kellyville Metro stations where the Minns government has slated 4600 new homes to be built.

Close to the Metro network and with lower house prices than other parts of Sydney, the area is key to Sydney avoiding becoming what Productivity NSW commissioner Peter Achterstraat described as “a city with no grandchildren”.

But locals have had to push to get the services they feel they will need from a future hospital.

Mayor of Hill Shire Michelle Byrne (left) and resident Vicki Giannoulis at the Rouse Hill hospital site, which remains a green field almost a decade after it was first promised.Credit: Rhett Wyman

“They didn’t even want to give us an emergency [department],” says Vicki Giannoulis, a local real estate agent and member of the Box Hill Nelson progression association.

Giannoulis moved to Rouse Hill 35 years ago, when Windsor Road was a quiet country road and the local school had fewer than 100 pupils. But she is concerned the government hasn’t considered the changing needs of an area populated mostly with young families.

“If they’re not going to put a birthing [centre] here, what are they going to be put up here instead? Rehab?” Giannoulis said. “We have young people up here. Why would we do that?”

In budget estimates earlier this month, health bureaucrats acknowledged the community would eventually need a hospital with birthing services, but said their modelling showed this likely wouldn’t be required until the back half of the 2030s.

Health Infrastructure acting chief executive Emma Skulander said Health Minister Ryan Park had been briefed on the scope, cost, and workforce requirements of adding birthing services to the new maternity unit.

‘Do I risk waiting and then having a baby on the side of the road? Because I really don’t want that.’

Lexie Kanaley, due to give birth to her second child in April

Liberal MP Damien Tudehope suggested adding birthing services would increase the cost by $200 million, but Skulander would not confirm that figure, saying the ministerial briefing was confidential.

Park said the hospital would be built with expansion zones that would “enable capacity for additional services down the track”.

A spokeswoman for Park said in a statement that NSW Health continuously assessed the demand for services and how best to meet the community’s needs.

“We are purposely building this new hospital with expansion zones to enable capacity for additional services down the track, future-proofing this vital piece of infrastructure for many years as the community needs increase,” the statement read.

Opposition health spokeswoman Kellie Sloane said Sydney’s north-west was experiencing “a serious case of Labor pain” with the government failing to plan for the population boom.

“You can’t change planning laws to add more population to Sydney’s biggest growth corridor without providing somewhere for all those babies to be born,” Sloane said in a statement, pointing to the Liberals’ record health infrastructure upgrade across 180 hospitals when last in power.

In failing to include a birthing centre in planning for the hospital, Hills Shire mayor Michelle Byrne says the government has missed an opportunity to “get the infrastructure in first before the rest of the population arrives”.

“The government is essentially forcing expectant women up these clogged roads to access Blacktown and Westmead. It’s just madness,” Byrne says. “We need our own hospital. Otherwise, we’re going to see a lot of births on the side of the road.”

With the closest public hospitals unreachable for many families, some have shelled out for private health cover to give birth at Norwest Private Hospital.

Kanaley’s boss, Michelle Walker, gave birth to her first daughter Rochelle at Westmead public hospital. The experience was fine, but after having her second daughter Valentina at Westmead Private, Walker wanted to be closer to home when pregnant with youngest daughter Charlize, and opted for Norwest.

Michelle Walker at home in Baulkham Hills with daughters Valentina, Rochelle, and Charlize and husband Steve. Credit: Rhett Wyman

Walker, who lives in Baulkham Hills, said many families moving to the area would not be able to afford private health cover and deserved the same access to quality public healthcare that is on offer in the east.

“I grew up in Bondi, where we had Prince of Wales and St Vincent’s. But here, Norwest private is our only local hospital,” she says. “People deserve to have services that they pay taxes for.”

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