‘I don’t care who builds it’: Cautious welcome in the west for Guy’s hospital plan

Residents have welcomed the opposition’s pledge to build a $900 million Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne’s rapidly growing western suburbs, a funding commitment Premier Daniel Andrews would not match on Thursday.

Opposition Leader Matthew Guy could not immediately explain how the Werribee hospital would be staffed, but said he would provide that detail before the November election.

Premier Daniel Andrews addresses the media on Thursday, with 13-month-old Angus, who attended a respiratory clinic this year with RSV.Credit: Justin McManus

“Our western suburbs are growing so exponentially,” Guy said. “The west can’t keep being ignored.”

The Victorian opposition has promised to shelve the Andrews government’s Suburban Rail Loop if elected and funnel the budgeted money into the state’s health system.

In competing press conferences on the health crisis on Thursday, Guy was speaking at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Parkville, shortly after Andrews and Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas re-announced two respiratory GP clinics for children.

Guy said the site for the new hospital would be determined after consultations, but expected it would include an emergency department. Construction would begin within the next term under a Coalition government, he said.

But he could not detail how he would staff the proposed 275-bed campus in Werribee. The Coalition has already offered free public transport for healthcare workers in an effort to retain staff.

Barbara McLure, chief executive of the Committee for Wyndham, said a Royal Children’s Hospital was sorely needed for the burgeoning west, beyond the Joan Kirner Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Sunshine.

“[There’s an] expectation that we can travel into the city for those services, or travel into Geelong,” McLure said. “It is really hard work.”

The City of Wyndham is one of the state’s fastest-growing areas and its population is projected to top 500,000 by 2041. Council data this year found 110 babies were born in Wyndham each week.

Liberal leader Matthew Guy has pledged a new hospital for Werribee.Credit: Eddie Jim

Dr Joe Garra, a GP and president of Ratepayers Werribee South, also welcomed the announcement and planning for the growing population.

“I don’t care who builds it. I don’t care which side of politics builds it,” said Garra, who ran as an independent in the last state election.

GP Mukesh Haikerwal, from the nearby Altona North Medical Centre, said he was not opposed to the new children’s hospital, but questioned whether the money could be better spent investing in existing community health infrastructure.

“Of course any addition to the infrastructure is always welcome, as long as it is well planned and co-ordinated,” Haikerwal said.

“We have a huge population growing in Wyndham, increasing by half the size of Canberra every year, and the supply of healthcare is very limited out there.”

He said it was “much easier to open a new hospital with a nice ribbon at the front”, but if you invested the same amount of money into enhancing pre-existing services “you’d probably get more bang for your buck”.

Haikerwal also queried where the hundreds of healthcare workers would come from and warned against “cannibalising staff into a new facility”.

Lisa Fitzpatrick, Victorian secretary of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, said she was not consulted and wanted to hear how Guy would recruit and retain staff.

“We vividly remember the last time the Liberal Party were in government and their detailed plan to get rid of nurses and midwives and replace them with assistants in nursing and midwifery,” Fitzpatrick said.

Opposition health spokeswoman Georgie Crozier said burnt-out staff were leaving the industry due to the government’s failure to properly plan and invest in the system even before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Andrews said the government was recruiting thousands of new healthcare workers, while Thomas said the opposition needed a plan to hire and retain healthcare staff rather than just promising infrastructure.

“A hospital without staff is just an empty shell,” Thomas said. “Our government has a number of health infrastructure projects and they are all fully staffed, fully funded.”

The premier declined to commit to the opposition’s proposal, saying skills and research were already concentrated at the Royal Children’s Hospital.

He said the government was investing in healthcare in the area, including the new women’s and children’s hospital in Sunshine and a redevelopment of the Werribee Mercy Hospital.

The seat of Werribee is held by Treasurer Tim Pallas with a safe margin, but internal polling shows Labor could be under threat in the city’s working-class outer suburbs following two years of COVID-19 lockdowns and mandates.

Labor on Thursday confirmed two paediatric respiratory GP clinics would open temporarily in North Melbourne and Monash in coming weeks, to ease the pressure on emergency departments for families who need help quickly but can’t access a GP.

“It is just getting harder every single day to find a bulk-billing doctor, a free medical appointment,” Andrews said, denying that the end of winter was poor timing.

The Andrews government has said the Coalition’s position on the Suburban Rail Loop would jeopardise thousands of jobs and end up costing the community more.

The Victorian government has so far allocated $11 billion to build the project’s first stage and has spent $2.2 billion on early works contracts, which the opposition will not tear up, leaving the Coalition with about $8.8 billion to redirect to the healthcare system.

The Royal Children’s Hospital declined to comment on the opposition’s announcement.

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