The Tasmanian Opposition has broken its silence on delays to the Royal Hobart Hospital redevelopment, defending its handling of the project.
Healthcare workers and builders are worried the Government could ultimately scale down the $580 million state and federally-funded redevelopment.
Last week, the Government called an urgent halt to work on the project, citing major cost blowouts under Labor.
It is refusing to set a new start date, and will not say whether the full project will proceed.
The Opposition has been quiet on the delay, but health spokeswoman Rebecca White has today broken the silence.
“[We] understand and respect they want to get their head around a very complex building project, but we are calling on them to be more transparent with the Tasmanian community, especially with the key stakeholders,” she said.
Ms White denies the previous government badly mismanaged the project.
“We had the Auditor-General hand down a report early this year, and from that some changes were made to the governance and arrangements from within the project itself, and work was due to start this week.”
“So I’m confident that had the Labor Government still been in power, we would have seen work begin on the new redevelopment of the Hobart hospital this week.”
Source: ABC