We can’t help wondering given we were told a major reason was to talk about the redevelopment of the Tamworth Hospital.

You see, when The Leader started asking questions – very basic questions – about the development the Minister had little or nothing to add to the little or nothing that has been said, ad nauseam, previously.

Take, for example, our request for a likely start date for construction.

When our reporter put this question to Ms Meagher she parroted what Morris Iemma had previously said during the 2007 election campaign and more recently in State Parliament – work would begin “before the end of the current parliamentary term”.

When our reporter then put it to the Minister she was unable to provide a specific likely start date for the project Ms Meagher then stated – a tad emphatically apparently – she had done so.

Health in NSW is being run by somebody who believes a two-and-a-half year window is “specific”.

What is “unspecific”? This

millennium?

The big mystery is why the State Government can’t just come out and say – as we’ve been predicting since March 2007 – that work on the Tamworth hospital will begin less than 12 months out from the 2011 State poll.

We know the planning processes funded in the June budget will take at least two years to complete. That is on record from Hunter New England Health.

Therefore, if everything goes to plan, the earliest construction work could begin would be in the last half of 2010.

If, as is often the case, there are “unforseen” delays we wouldn’t be surprised to see the first sod turned – by whoever is then running the NSW Labor Government – as late as three or four weeks out from polling day.

Other questions the Minister couldn’t answer yesterday were when her Government hoped to have the hospital finished by and if it would be rebuilt on the current site.

Our information, for the record, is it will most likely be on the same site. Glad to help out on that one Minister!