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Buswell slams Health Dept

Treasurer Troy Buswell delivers stinging criticism. Picture: Steve Ferrier/The West Australian

Treasurer Troy Buswell has delivered a volley of stinging criticism at the Health Department over “significant failures” in its troubled commissioning of Fiona Stanley Hospital in Murdoch.

During the broadside on his way into Cabinet this morning, Mr Buswell said he and former under treasurer Tim Marney had “a number of discussions over an extended period of time about concerns we both had at the performance of the Department of Health”.

Mr Marney last week told a Parliamentary committee scrutinising the State’s $4.3 billion facilities management contract with Serco he was “pissed off” Treasury only got to see it two weeks before Cabinet signed it.

The committee also heard taxpayers had forked out at least an extra $330 million for blowouts in commissioning, transition, information technology and contract cots associated with the hospital.

The bricks and mortar side of the hospital was completed on time and on budget but instead of opening on schedule in April, planning and workforce failures have delayed its full commissioning until April 2015.

Serco has pushed back much of its recruiting for the first year of its management but will still get 60 per cent of its contracted fees for 2014 to run a non-operational hospital.

This morning, Mr Buswell said he was not treasurer in mid-2011 when Treasury was given what Mr Marney called “limited visibility” of the contract, but played down the impact of the contract on problems plaguing the hospital.

“The issues at Fiona Stanley Hospital from my observations are less about the contract that’s in place with Serco and much more about the performance failures on a range of fronts by the Health Department,” he said.

“I think they are two distinct issues and I can say for some time I’ve shared the concerns that Mr Marney’s put to me around the performance of the Health Department, in particular in relation to the post-construction transition into Fiona Stanley Hospital.”

Despite the warnings by Mr Marney to Mr Buswell and his predecessor as Treasurer, Christian Porter, former health department director general Kim Snowball was insistent the hospital would open on time.

That view was accepted by Health Minister Kim Hames, but Mr Buswell would not be drawn on where responsibility for the Health Department’s failures lay.

“I’m not going to reflect on whose view held sway other than to say that it is clear that there were significant failures in terms of delivery of information technology and in the delivery of the clinical services planning that were needed to ensure that the transition into Fiona Stanley Hospital in a timely way,” he said.

“It is always difficult and I think fraught with danger to point a finger at one person or another but it is clear … that there have been some significant failings in the performance of that agency.”