Dunedin's Labour candidate has defended cuts to the new hospital, as a city councillor launches his own electoral bid motivated by the "dismissive" attitude of local representatives.
Jim O’Malley announced he was standing as an independent candidate due to the apparent lack of pushback against the $90 million design cuts to the planned hospital, which he predicted would ultimately fail to achieve any savings.
The final straw had been list MP Rachel Brooking’s comment in April that the council’s position on building the hospital to the original business case was “intellectually lazy”.
Ms Brooking said yesterday she wanted to focus on what was really wanted for the hospital and how that could be achieved, rather than sticking exactly to the business case when costs had gone up.
"That was the point that was being made, not that people shouldn't be advocating for a wonderful facility for Dunedin," she said.
Last December, the government announced the $90m in cuts along with a $110m funding boost to address a $200m budget blowout.
Several cuts have now been reversed following backlash, including from the council’s "They Save We Pay’' campaign.
Health Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall announced in April that $10m had been put back into the new hospital budget, and cuts to psychogeriatric beds and pathology space would be investigated.
Earlier this week, she announced a separate pathology building no more than 1000m from the hospital and the reinstatement of the 12 lost beds.
Her office did not supply the value of the changes yesterday, stating costs would be "outlined in the next phase of the planning".
Ms Brooking disputed Cr O’Malley’s claim the roll-backs were down to the council’s campaign. She said Dunedin’s Labour MPs had also been working hard behind the scenes — a comment similar to that of Taieri MP Ingrid Leary earlier this week.
Asked yesterday if the quest for savings had been a waste of time, Ms Brooking said "some process" needed to happen, and pointed to the lost pavilion building as a major component of the cuts that remained unchanged.
He believed the main driver of the recent hospital reviews was the pressure the council had put on the government.
"I predict that by the time the additional infrastructure has been built, the whole $90m will have been used up and we [will] have a hospital that wasn’t built to its best design specifications," he said.
"This could have been avoided by listening to the community back in late 2022 and funding the remaining gap."
The local Labour MPs were noticeable in their absence during the council campaign fighting the cuts, Cr O’Malley said.
The relationship ranged from "indifferent to frosty".
Accusing Labour of complacency, he dismissed the idea that a fight behind closed doors was sufficient.
He was a disappointed ex-Labour voter with politics further to the left, he said.
Another aim of his bid for Parliament was to launch "the 2033 movement", aiming to start a new left-wing political party within the next 10 years.
If successful, he planned to stay on as a councillor until a year out from council elections, as this was the point at which his resignation would not trigger the unnecessary cost of a by-election.
