Opposition assistant health spokesman Stephen Jones visited Launceston on Wednesday to pledge the funding to convert government health administration building Allambi into a 10-bed hospice.

But the state government said Allambi was not available to become such a facility and questioned how the party would accommodate the building’s current staff and services.

Health Minister Michael Ferguson labelled Labor cruel for its “empty promise”.

“Without funding, at best it looks like a plan to build an empty building with no patients,” he said.

“The promise of $3 million towards a building may seem attractive to supporters of a hospice concept, yet without any funding for or any plan to provide services, it is a half-baked cash splash designed to buy votes but which will ultimately fail to deliver.”

Mr Jones said: “The $3 million will go a long way to meeting the capital needs of this project. There will be, as there is in other hospice models around the world, an important contribution from the local community and service organisations.”

Mr Jones said the operation of the hospice would rely on collaboration between community groups, service providers and different levels of government.

“I think the state government themselves will come to their senses and they will understand having a model of care based on hospice as opposed to the hospital is going to be a far more efficient form of care and meeting people’s end-of-life needs,” he said.

The North lost its only dedicated hospice in 2007 when the former state Labor government closed the facility. Since then, the community has relied on limited public beds at Launceston’s Calvary St Luke’s, palliative care suites in rural hospitals and federally-funded home-based palliative care services. A recent study found those services would meet the demand of the next two decades.

Friends of the Northern Hospice vice chairwoman Barb Baker said the opposition’s funding announcement was a bright counter to the recently-released independent report.

“There hasn’t been much good news for us in the past few weeks but to have someone believe as we do that end-of-life care can be provided in a non-clinical setting is wonderful so we couldn’t be happier.”