Only 4 per cent of the $200 million committed to redevelop the Cooktown Hospital will be spent in the 2024-25 financial year, a figure editor Lyndon Keane says hints at how much of a priority the project actually is for the State Government. Photo: Cape York Weekly.
Four per cent. It’s not much of anything, is it? If I promised you an outstanding bottle of wine, one you’ve been attempting to get your hands on for years, and then told you – after the adulation and thanks ceased, of course – you could only imbibe 4 per cent of it over the next 12 months, how incandescent with rage would you be?
That’s the situation Cooktown has found itself in after the Queensland Government announced last week it was committing $200 million to redevelop a contemporary hospital as part of its 2024-25 budget.
Cook Shire Council and the community have been advocating for the existing facility to be upgraded for years, with Mayor Robyn Holmes heralding the announcement as an “astronomical win” for Cooktown. So far, so good, right? The problem begins when you start to look beyond the political spin and at the budget’s fine print. The part Treasurer Cameron Dick and our elected overlords hope you won’t pay any attention to.
The fine print reveals the government will only spend $8m of its $200m commitment during the 2024-25 financial year, with the outstanding $198m needed to deliver a new hospital to be coughed up over the six years following that. Yes, that’s a seven-year plan to build vital health infrastructure that’s at least that long overdue. A 4 per cent commitment between now and June next year. A cynic would suggest it’s an election year, because a 4 per cent spend during 2024-25 will do little to improve short-term health outcomes for anyone other than politicians trying desperately to keep their careers on life support.
In the nothing-is-as-simple-as-it-should-be landscape of politics, procurement and public sector project management, $8m will provide for little more progress than a tendering process to be undertaken and proponent announced. The tokenistic 2024-25 funding commitment means there is no chance every politician’s photo op favourite, the official sod turning, will even be able to happen during the coming year. Keep your ceremonial shovels, hard hats and cheesy infrastructure puns holstered for now, ladies and gentlemen.
The $200m commitment to fund the redevelopment of Cooktown’s hospital is fantastic, but the $8m fine print reality reeks of a government that is in no hurry to improve the wellbeing of voters in the northernmost part of the state. Not when the outstanding $198m can be spread thin and used on political promises aimed at enticing those in more geographically dense electorate areas. Like that stretch of dirt between the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast, for example.
Political observers have described this as a budget designed to win Premier Steven Miles and his entourage another four years at the helm, and it’s difficult to find a flaw in that argument, particularly when you consider the paltry crumbs and minimal immediate spend offered to Cape York. If the government was serious about the region and boosting the liveability of our amazing part of the world, there would have been a hell of a lot more than $8m being dangled on the end of a string for the 2024-25 financial year. A $50m commitment over the next 12 months would have signalled sincerity and an appetite to kickstart a health infrastructure project that’s already long overdue. A 4 per cent promise for 2024-25 signals the government no longer cares whether it retains Cook after 26 October.
Politics is much like an onion, especially when it comes to budgets. It has plenty of layers, and the more of them you peel back, the more your eyes are going to water. When you peel it back to its core, there’s little doubt the budget delivered by the State Government last week is going to cause plenty of tears for Cape York residents not only between now and 30 June 2025, but for years to come.
