Media Release | 15 May 2025
Libby Mettam MLA
Deputy Leader of the Opposition
Shadow Minister for Health
The State Government must come clean on the delivery date for the new Women and Babies Hospital following news that the Cook Government’s hand-picked builder has been placed into voluntary administration.
Shadow Health Minister Libby Mettam said the building of the vitally needed hospital was already a six-year saga with no construction start date in sight.
She said the most basic due diligence by the Cook Government should have revealed the precarious state of joint venture partner Roberts and Co, which went into voluntary administration yesterday.
“This project has been mismanaged and botched from the start when the Cook Government contradicted experts with a last-minute change of location, which clinicians say will lead to death and disability in newborns,” she said.
“This Government rushed to make the contractor joint venture announcement less than
a week before Christmas, and it now appears it had not completed the appropriate due
diligence.
“The West Australian public needs to be told whether this latest news is likely to delay the construction of this vitally important new hospital and further compromise the health and well-being of women and babies in Western Australia.
“Questions also need to be answered about the cost of the project.”
Ms Mettam said Health Infrastructure Minister John Carey’s attempt to cast Roberts and Co as just a junior partner only further muddied the waters.
“That certainly wasn’t the impression the public was given when the Government announced Roberts and Co as a joint venture partner with a company that has never built a hospital in Australia,” she said.
“It is simply not good enough for one of the new quarter-strength health ministers to simply brush aside such a monumental failing in its procurement process.
“If the Labor Government had committed to the original QEII site six years ago when then-Health Minister Roger Cook began committing funds to a new hospital, this vital infrastructure would be well under construction.”
ENDS
Media Contact: Graham Mason | 0419 194 792
