Nice Hospital, Shame There’s No One in It

Victorians should have learned their lesson long ago: vote-seeking politicians will promise the world. Then, like feckless womanisers, they come. Or, more correctly, they go. But they leave just as much of a soggy mess of disappointment behind them.

Like many a disappointed girl, Victorians are fast realising that Dictator Dan treated ’em mean, kept ’em keen, then loved ’em and left ’em.

Former premier Daniel Andrews promised to build the Craigieburn Community Hospital – and nine others like it – on the eve of the 2018 election campaign. The idea was for these small public hospitals to take pressure off emergency departments by offering urgent care for minor injuries and illnesses, as well as allied health, alcohol and mental health services.

He also promised to deliver 4,000 new ICU beds at the height of Covid. That one didn’t even last ’til election time. Doormat Victorians fell for it, though. It almost serves them right that the Craigieburn Community Hospital is standing finished, but as empty and windblown as the half-billion dollar Mickleham quarantine facility.

Construction was slated to finish by 2024, but three months into 2025, residents of Craigieburn and nearby suburbs still haven’t been told when the community hospital will be fully operational.

Meanwhile, the budget for the entire project has blown out by more than $100 million despite the scrapping of three sites in Eltham, Fishermans Bend and Torquay.

The brand-new Craigieburn facility, built next to the existing Craigieburn Health Service, has become such a hot-button issue that the local council – the most Labor-dominated in Melbourne – has demanded an explanation from Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas.

Haha… good luck with that.

“They won’t give us an answer on when it’s open,” [councillor Jim Overend] said.

“I spoke to staff there, at the older part [of the health service], and they have no idea. The crux of it is we’ve got a hospital there and we don’t know when it’s opening. Our community deserves better.”

It’s a similar story in Cranbourne, in Melbourne’s southeast, where another brand-spanking-new hospital is sitting idle.

Casey Residents and Ratepayers Association vice-president Anthony Tassone said residents had endured disruption due to roadworks and the relocation and eventual closure of much-loved businesses at the former community hub where the hospital has been built.

“Residents are keen to see the new Cranbourne community hospital open and operating, but despite the building looking to have been completed for some time, do not know when it will be able to take patients,” Tassone said […]

“Residents have worn the pain and now want to see the gain of health services that have been long promised by the Victorian government.”

Dan might at least have bought them flowers before he buggered off into the night on his fat parliamentary pension.