Mr Hipkins made the promise at the party’s annual conference in Christchurch yesterday during a wide-ranging address that touched on issues such as the cost of living, health and education.
It has been a year since Labour’s defeat at the polls and the formation of a coalition government of National, Act New Zealand and NZ First.
Labour would have a much bigger focus on keeping people healthy, rather than rationing care for illnesses that could have been avoided, Mr Hipkins said yesterday.
"The way you save money in the health system isn’t by cutting doctors, nurses and the people who help them to do their jobs.
"It’s by investing in policies like free prescriptions and keeping people out of hospital in the first place."
"And yes, I’m going to announce we will complete the full rebuild of Dunedin Hospital, as we promised."
A spokeswoman for the Labour Party clarified this meant to the specifications proposed during the 2023 election campaign.
More than 30,000 people marched in the city in September after the government announced it would either scale down the project or retrofit the existing hospital.
The government is expected to make its decision soon, after announcing the change in approach in late September. It has set the budget for the project at $1.88billion.
After yesterday’s speech, Mr Hipkins said in a statement building the hospital as promised was a "no-brainer".
"National has made up all sorts of numbers, released another report that doesn’t include the numbers it claims and now won’t budge on its arbitrary figure that will see the hospital downgraded.
"They’ve manufactured a crisis to justify cutting back Dunedin Hospital while giving hundreds of millions in a tax break to tobacco companies.
"They’re playing politics with Dunedin’s future, saying one thing to get votes, then doing another in government. Just build the hospital as promised."
Dunedin Mayor Jules Radich said he was "encouraged" by Mr Hipkins’ promises yesterday, because they would help keep the issue front of mind at a national level.
"It’s not a Dunedin hospital, it’s a southern regional hospital, and there are five government MPs in this region."
Mr Radich said with the outpatients building nearing completion and the site ready for the inpatients building, trying to retrofit the existing hospital would be inefficient and "cost a fortune".
Health Minister Shane Reti fired back at Mr Hipkins.
"No-one can take this ‘promise’ seriously," he said.
"Labour is the party which promised a new Dunedin hospital in 2017 and the main progress they made was in cost blowouts.
"We’re now cleaning up their mess and have had to commit an additional $290million simply to keep the inpatients project moving."
Shortly before the government made the announcement it would be scaling down the project, clinicians warned government officials about the dangers of retrofitting old buildings for clinical services, staged delivery of a redesigned new Dunedin hospital and splitting inpatient services between sites.
It said such an approach could lead to "a cascade of unpleasant surprises, delays, escalating costs and knock-on effects and interruptions on multiple clinical services throughout the building".
Infometrics chief economist Brad Olsen has said costs could rise by $10m every three months the project languishes.
