Mr Radich, Invercargill Mayor Nobby Clark and Waitaki District Mayor Gary Kircher, along with several Dunedin city councillors, will be in Wellington to campaign for the new Dunedin hospital to be built as promised, after the government made the announcement in September it would either down-scale the project or retro-fit the existing Dunedin hospital.
‘‘We want to take our protest to Wellington so that people in central government do have a greater idea of what's happening, because really in terms of press coverage it's mostly been concentrated in the South,’’ Mr Radich said.
‘‘I think there's a need to have all of the government politicians aware that Dunedin and Invercargill and Oamaru and the whole people of the region are really concerned about the possibility of reduction in scope and capacity of this hospital.’’
As well as presenting a petition to Parliament — containing nearly 30,000 signatures — the delegation also planned to meet Health Minister Shane Reti.
In September, the government set a new budget for the hospital of $1.88 billion.
‘‘I know that Dr Reti has been working hard and he's had a team of people working hard to see how they can compress the price of the hospital while retaining the services and facilities,’’ Mr Radich said.
‘‘Our preference is that all services and facilities are retained and if a change of cladding or some such thing enables that to happen while retaining the structure and the capacity of the hospital, that would be an ideal situation.’’
Dr Reti said in a statement he looked forward to catching up with Mr Radich. He did not give any further details about the meeting.
Mr Radich said there would also be a tour of Wellington in the specially-branded ambulance ‘‘Cliff’’.
