The opening of Perth's new children's hospital could be delayed again, the West Australian opposition fears.
Builder John Holland was due to hand over the $1.2 billion facility in late 2015 but fell behind schedule.
At the time, then-health minister Kim Hames said the state government was at the mercy of the contractor, which had put the project "miles behind schedule".
The state government now expects to transfer patients to the hospital by the end of 2016, with full commissioning to take about five months.
Former planning minister John Day, who took on the health portfolio on Thursday as part of a cabinet reshuffle, said Dr Hames' staged opening time frame still sounded "about right", but added: "I've only been in the job three hours."
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"The hospital will be open to patients before the end of the year," Mr Day told reporters.
"There probably will be some staged opening of the facilities ... but the main patient transfer will be in one day."
Opposition health spokesman Roger Cook said he tried in vain to extract a practical completion date from the state government.
"We have no confidence the government will deliver this hospital even by the end of this year. Remember it was promised in 2015," Mr Cook said.
He said there was talk of the hospital being delayed beyond the March 2017 state election "so that this doesn't turn into John Day's Fiona Stanley Hospital".
"Clearly there are warning signs that this hospital is starting to struggle," Mr Cook said.
