Premier and ministers keep little Joe’s picture on their desks: The tragedy that changed NSW

April 30, 2026 — 5:00am

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.

Since the death of her two-year-old, Joe, after serious failures of care at the Northern Beaches Hospital in 2024, several doctors have told Elouise Massa it was “only a matter of time” before a tragedy of that scale occurred at the scandal-plagued institution.

“The writing was on the wall”, they’ve said. It’s always made her and husband Danny “recoil”, she told The Sydney Morning Herald this week. “Why did it have to be our family which was the catalyst for change? But it is and was.”

On Wednesday, the NSW government officially took control of the hospital after a $190 million deal with its former private operator, Healthscope. It brought to a close one of the most significant public policy failures in the state’s recent history. It began in 2013 when the former Coalition government struck a public-private partnership deal to build and run the hospital.

The hospital has been beset by one failure after another. Within weeks of its opening in 2018, the Herald was reporting on shortages of vital drugs including insulin, adrenaline and antibiotics.

The hospital’s then-medical director, Louise Messara, missed the official launch because she had phoned into a meeting with the Australian Salaried Medical Officers Federation – the doctor’s union – which was threatening to support exhausted junior doctors who were withholding treatment from private patients due to “grave concerns” over understaffing. She and two........

© The Sydney Morning Herald