A complex contract complicates the roll back of the Northern Beaches Hospital privatisation but the state government says it wants it back in public hands.

“Private equity shouldn’t be running acute emergency care.”

That was the blunt message NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey delivered to a community forum on the future of the Northern Beaches Hospital.

At the same forum Health Minister Ryan Park said the privatisation of the Northern Beaches Hospital “was a bad decision that had detrimental outcomes”.

“This is a model of care that, unfortunately does not deliver the benefits to the community in the way that the public health system does. When private firms are involved, there is obviously going to be a focus on the bottom line,” he said.

Daniel Mookhey said unravelling the contract was not simple.

“We’re eager to ensure that the hospital returns to public hands. We are also mindful that we don’t think private equity deserves a windfall gain,” he said.

“In order to exit we are obliged to follow the contract we inherit. That has a lot of complexity around it. The contract wasn’t written so it could easily be broken. It contains clauses that require the state, if it decides to terminate it, to pay what was the expected profits from the time at which the contract was signed”.

The contract was signed by Liberal Premier Mike Baird in 2014. Technically it runs to 2058. The Baird government intended Northern Beaches Hospital to be the first of five hospitals that would be built under this model across NSW. The contract has been renegotiated a few times according to a recent Auditor-General’s report.