In a private room at the Mater Hospital in Newcastle, a mother listened to her daughter’s anguished cries: “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe!” The daughter later died. “Her room had towels over the windows. I asked the nurse why, and she said, ‘It’s because of the mould’”, the mother related.
This and similar stories were told at a public meeting on 29 May, where people shared their grief and demanded answers about the Aspergillus mould that appears throughout the hospital. The mould can cause pneumonia. In vulnerable people, it has a mortality rate of between 40 and 90 percent. A grieving family member told the Newcastle Herald earlier this year: “We were never told there was any kind of mould infestation going on”.
In 2005, the NSW Labor government approved a public-private partnership to redevelop the Mater, a cancer hospital. Novacare (a consortium of Westpac, Abigroup, Medirest and Honeywell) was engaged to construct and operate the facilities on behalf of the state government for 28 years. It was a decision with devastating consequences.
A whistleblower, Luke Carroll, revealed to a parliamentary inquiry that it was common practice at Honeywell to shred documents and falsify mould testing results. The state government’s own list of victims came to light only after it was mistakenly included in a list of unclassified documents for a court hearing.
In addition to the mould, the inquiry heard a litany of other complaints. Maggots fell from the ceiling onto patients. A plumber repeatedly raised the alarm that sewage could mix with drinking water. A nurse reported that HEPA filters had been “bought from Bunnings” and were “not commercial grade”.
Despite all this, the Minns Labor government has refused to bring the Mater Hospital back into public hands. Novacare offered to sell its stake in the hospital for $2 to offload liabilities. Instead of making Novacare pay its debts and honour its responsibilities—and then putting the hospital back in public hands, Labor continues to treat Novacare as a business partner.
“When government has these contracts with these operators”, Health Minister Ryan Park told journalists, “then we have to honour those contracts, otherwise the taxpayer is up for a very significant sum of money”. Hunter New England Health chief executive Tracey McCosker has admitted to “putting a hold” on $300 million in fines “to try and get the relationship on the ground better”.
What are the agonising deaths of cancer patients, when there’s a contract to be honoured? What does the grief of dozens of families matter when there’s money to be made.
