WA Premier Roger Cook rejects reports about plans to build maternity hospital at QEII site

Roger Cook has rejected reports the Health Department is considering building a maternity hospital at the QEII site after Labor spent months trashing the idea during the election.

Reports emerged on Monday the North Metropolitan Health Service had been canvassing the idea of building a maternity hospital at the QEII site, first reported by Nine News.

The move would be a major backflip for the Cook Government which rejected the Liberal Party’s pitch for the QEII site build, instead opting for a women’s and babies hospital in Murdoch.

But on Tuesday Mr Cook denied the possibility of a new hospital at the Nedlands site.

“Let me be clear, we’re not looking to build another hospital on that site,” he said.

“As you know, it’s constrained, it’s highly difficult and a complicated area to construct in, we are obviously developing a new women’s and babies hospital at the Murdoch campus, and significantly expanding maternity services at Osborne Park.

“We continue to look at whether we need a specialist neo-maternity service for those babies that will likely need surgery in the first few hours after birth, which is something that we’ve stipulated many times before.”

The planned Murdoch-based hospital will cost $1.8 billion to construct and would replace the ageing King Edward Memorial Hospital. Osborne Park Hospital will also undergo an expansion under the plan to double the number of births at the site.

Opposition health spokesperson Libby Mettam took the issue to the fore during the 2025 State Election.

She argued the Murdoch plan could put babies born at high-risk in harm’s way if they were required to be transported up to 45 minutes to Perth Children’s Hospital for treatment.

During the election Labor refuted the idea of building the hospital at QEII saying it would take longer and be hard to complete without disrupting existing services.

Mr Cook argued the Health Department were looking in to increasing maternity services at the existing QEII site.

“The Health Department is leading a consultation process to explore the viability of additional maternity services for women with high-risk neonates at QEII site,” he said.

“We actually made a feature of that, we talked about that, it was part of our consultation with the clinical community at that campus.”

According to Mr Cook the facility would only be expected to facilitate less than 100 births a year.

“Obviously there’s a very limited number of deliveries where you anticipate that the child would need extra care following birth,” he said.”

“Now, on many occasions, indeed most occasions, we can anticipate that.

“On those very few occasions, you could understand that they’re considering a very limited maternity service in the context of the Perth Children’s Hospital so that that baby can be transferred to a neonate facility as quickly as possible.”