Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has repeatedly characterised the project as being afflicted by a cost crisis, stating it had started out at $1.2 billion and moved to about $1.6b under Labour, before his own government added about $300 million to reach the existing cap of just under $1.9b. The cost was now threatening to approach $3b and he could not allow this.
The Otago Daily Times highlighted a key point of context Mr Luxon twice omitted to mention — that he introduced about $400m of extra activity that had previously been treated as outside the scope of the budget and he had done so mid-sequence.
There appeared to have been a switch in mathematics methodology midway through.
The prime minister’s office denied this, saying there had been no "switch in methodology".
Mr Luxon, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti and Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop had all "laid out the facts of the situation", a spokeswoman said.
That was not good enough for Dunedin city councillor Steve Walker.
"Personally, I believe that the government has purposely resorted to obfuscation around the hospital budget issue," he said.
"Altering the procedures around how you land on the questionable $3b budget midway through the process is disingenuous at best and at worst a bizarre and preposterous way to do politics."
The Prime Minister’s Office said "we reject the Labour-endorsed councillor’s statement".
Cr Christine Garey said the prime minister’s attempt to "cloud the issue" with his $3b figure was not fooling anyone.
"The government’s ‘creative mathematics’ reeks of arrogance," she said.
"Do they really think the people of the South cannot see right through this?"
Dr Reti said a pathology lab and carparking were "an integral part of the project which were never adequately budgeted for by Labour".
He also referred in a September 26 media release to what appears to be the central issue.
"Compounding our concerns is the fact that recent project pricing came in several hundred million dollars over the hospital’s [$1.88b] appropriation, even without including the pathology lab, refurb of existing facilities or carparking."
Cr Barker said her understanding was carparking, pathology and decommissioning at the existing site had not been part of the final hospital build plan.
"We’d asked about parking but been told it was out of scope, so that was fine at the time as we were fighting for bed numbers and theatre numbers and scanner space as the most urgent issues."
In an opinion piece for the Otago Daily Times this week, Dunedin Mayor Jules Radich indicated he believed the hospital could be built for $2b.
"Other costs such as $225m for IT, $45m for pathology and many millions more for parking are extraneous to the build cost and it is disingenuous for the ministers to try to add them in at this stage," he said.
"We’re not going to accept broken promises and a hospital that fails the people of our region.
"Keep your promise to build the hospital the South needs, with no cuts to clinical services or facilities."
