September 2026

There is something fundamentally wrong when politicians decide taxpayers are better off not knowing how much of their own money is being spent on individual projects.

That is the extraordinary situation surrounding the long-delayed Coomera Hospital on the Gold Coast, where the Queensland Government is refusing to reveal the current budget for one of the state’s biggest infrastructure projects.

According to the Gold Coast Bulletin, Premier David Crisafulli and Health Minister Tim Nicholls visited the Coomera site to announce Multiplex as the builder — but refused to say how much the hospital will cost.

This is a project previously valued at $1.3 billion, while reports late last year suggested the ultimate cost could reach $2.25 billion, displaying the kind of rampant cost blow-out that Bureaucracy Beat has highlighted regularly.

That is not small change.

This is taxpayers’ money, indeed lots of it, and the taxpayers have every right to know what is happening to it.

The Queensland Premier argues that revealing project budgets before contracts are finalised can inflate tender prices and contribute to cost blowouts.
There may be circumstances where some details need to remain confidential during active negotiations.

But there is a very large difference between protecting genuinely sensitive commercial negotiations and creating a culture of secrecy around major public expenditure.

Governments do not own this money.

They are custodians of it.

And when billions of dollars are being committed to hospitals, roads, rail projects and other infrastructure, transparency should be the default position — not something offered later when politicians decide the timing is convenient.

This matters even more because Coomera Hospital already has a troubled history.

The project has suffered years of delays, changing completion dates and escalating costs.

The first stage was originally expected to be completed by September 2027.

A review then pushed the earliest completion date to March 2028.

Now stage one, providing 400 beds, is not expected to be operational until 2031, with another 200 beds promised in 2032.

That is a delay of several years in one of Australia’s fastest-growing regions, where demand for health services is increasing rapidly. And, sadly, par for the course for major infrastructure projects across Australia, with no one EVER held accountable.

There have even been reports that substantial work completed under the previous government has since been demolished.

Against that background, secrecy over the latest price tag is especially unacceptable.

The public deserves answers.

How much has already been spent?

How much work has been written off?

What is the revised project budget?

How much have the delays added to the cost?

And what safeguards are now in place to prevent another blowout?

These are not unreasonable questions.

They are exactly the questions taxpayers should be asking — and governments should be answering.

Politicians from all sides routinely promise openness and transparency when seeking election.

Those promises mean very little if, once in office, important information is hidden behind phrases like “commercial-in-confidence” and “standard procedure”.

Government transparency should not depend on which party is in power.

The principle is much bigger than that.

When politicians spend public money, the public has a right to know how much is being spent, why costs are changing and whether taxpayers are receiving value for money.

Secrecy is not accountability.

And telling taxpayers they will find out the final bill later is simply not good enough.