WENDELL HUSSEY | Cadet | Contact
The nation’s Health Minister has allowed us a sneak peek inside a state-of-the-art new hospital that could exist, but doesn’t.
In an exclusive sit down with The Advocate, Greg Hunt released images of what a brand spanking new hospital in a major region would look like, if we hadn’t spent the money on locking people up in offshore detention.
“Pretty fancy huh,” said Hunt, flipping through the pages of a shiny booklet with Scott Morrison’s face on it.
“All the bells and whistles”
“Nice 800 bedder that could take the load off the state’s ICU capacity”
The digital walkthrough of the marvelous piece of public infrastructure comes after the country has spent the better part of 3 billion dollars on holding people in offshore detention.
The costs of holding people on the island of Nauru over recent years have ticked over 2 billion Australian dollars, with the remaining 100 or so men on the island costing roughly 4 million a year to accommodate in inhumane conditions.
The Murugappan family who was held on Christmas Island and are still in detention have resulted in nearly half a billion dollars of costs to the taxpayer, which would have been offset by just letting them work in the rural Queensland town that welcomed them.
There was also the 423 million dollar contract to run the Manus Island detention centre given to a company called Paladin, who operated out of a shack on Kangaroo Island and didn’t have to compete at a tender level.
“We could have even gotten two mad new hospitals out of it to be honest,” laughed the Health Minister about the Liberal and Labor government’s decisions to try and focus people’s fear and anger about growing economic hardship on the people that come here by boat.
“But, they’ve stopped coming here by boat now, so maybe in a few years’ time we can get something like this up and running,” explained Hunt about our breaches of Human Rights under the United Nations guidelines.
“Just have to re-elect us aye,” he winked.
More to come.
