- In short: Tasmania's health department has revealed plans for a health and wellbeing precinct in Hobart's St Johns Park, replacing plans to redevelop the Repatriation Hospital
- What's next?: Consultation on the master plan will begin soon
Tasmania's health department has abandoned plans to redevelop Hobart's Repatriation Hospital, and will instead transform the historic St Johns Park site in New Town into a 'health and wellbeing precinct' instead.
Under stage three of the Royal Hobart Hospital's redevelopment plan, announced in 2019, the Repat Hospital was going to become a subacute and mental health campus.
Now, according to a draft master plan released on Wednesday, St Johns is the preferred option because it has more room for development and expansion, provides greater access to green spaces and parkland and new buildings can be constructed while services continue being delivered at the Royal Hobart Hospital and the Repat.
Stage one of the 20-year overhaul will include a mental health short stay unit and the state's first eating disorder clinic.
Stage two will create a new older persons' mental health facility to replace the Roy Fagan Centre.
Stage three will include three new buildings for seniors' mental health, rehabilitation, geriatric evaluation and management, allied health and palliative care services.
The master plan identifies access to parkland as key to the site's appeal.
It says "ensuring the significant heritage of the site is protected, the St Johns Park site will be revitalised and the precinct will provide unique green spaces for community enjoyment, exercise and reflection".
That will include gardens, created using a "therapeutic landscape concept, which engages the senses to bring about presence and calm".
Questions over number of mental health beds
The head of the Australian Medical Association in Tasmania, Dr John Saul, told ABC Breakfast's Ryk Goddard there still wasn't much detail available.
But he said a key question would be the number of mental health beds included.
"When you look at the 2019 master plan, we were looking at 85 beds proposed for the Repat development," he said.
"But when you look at this facility, all that's mentioned so far is an additional 15 beds here and 12 beds for eating disorders.
"We've just lost 31 beds at St Helens [private hospital], so sadly the numbers don't quite add up.
"It's an opportunity but what lies in the fine print, that will be the challenge."
The St Johns Park precinct's historic buildings date back to the 1830s and have a troubled past.
The site was the original location of the Queen's Orphan Schools, which housed Aboriginal children and those from poor families in squalid conditions between 1833 and 1879.
Later it housed the New Town Invalid Asylum and was a treatment centre for tuberculosis and polio sufferers.
In 2018, two historic buildings either side of the St Johns Anglican church were handed to arts group Kickstart Arts, which sought to turn the site's traumatic history into something positive.
Kickstart Art's Josh Madgwick says it is not clear what will happen to that arrangement now.
"I don't know about the redevelopment of the heritage buildings that we occupy but certainly no, we haven't been informed of any plans to move us out," he said.
"We've put considerable time and effort into revitalising those buildings.
"What we wanted to do is take a site of trauma, some really horrible things happened there, and create a space for the community and change the story of what happened here."
The master plan will be open for consultation in the middle of this year.
