Since it has been talking up its ability to address the country’s infrastructure deficit, here is the chance for it to strut its stuff, to assure us this is back on track.
With much hot air expended on the costly sins of delay committed by the previous administration and the need for fast-tracking all things important, would it be too much to expect it might be able to hurry things up?
Apparently so.
After introducing its own delay to the inpatient building for a rethink of that project in September on the grounds of expense, the government may have been surprised at the depth of southern opprobrium for its dithering, and National’s failure to fulfil an election promise.
But while it made the big announcement at the end of January for a scaled-back version of the inpatient building to proceed on the Cadbury site, two months on there is uneasiness around the lack of obvious progress.
Tellingly, perhaps, the new Dunedin hospital web page on the Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora website has not been updated since October last year.
Click on the section telling you options for the hospital are being worked through and the page will be updated as soon as decisions are finalised, and you get a "408 forbidden" message.
The excitement around the striking outpatient building has been tempered by the warning from Treasury we reported this month it is facing significant delays which risk blowing the budget.
It is being squeezed by inflationary pressures and programme delay and its opening has been delayed by nine months to September 2026.
Across the road, the lonely set of piles for the inpatient building are waiting forlornly for action.
Treasury has also raised concerns about risks to this building, highlighting the delay to signing the main contract for the build adding to the risk of further price escalation.
We cannot see how the $1.88 billion limit the government has set for the project will turn out to be the final figure.
When Health Minister Simeon Brown made his announcement about the inpatient building at the end of January, he said there would be activity on-site by the middle of this year.
But while that announcement told us some of what we could expect in the new inpatient building, as former chairman of the governance group for the rebuild Pete Hodgson points out, we still do not know how we are going to get it.
The hope had been the main contractor would be signed up in about July last year, but that has yet to happen. Parliament yesterday was told that Helath NZ was "actively progressing the next stages of the project, including detailed design planning and contractual negotiations."
The project has already chewed through two programme directors with hospital construction experience, without adequate explanation given for their departures.
The second of them left last November and there has been no announcement about a replacement.
It is no surprise an internal HNZ report flags the high risk of hospital staff leaving over the constant delays and uncertainty, and that insecurity about the project’s progression and repetitive resets could also impact staff wellbeing.
While that report was from last October, we wonder if much has changed.
If the government wants us to believe it knows what it is doing on this then let us see some detail about what it expects to happen and when.
Just as importantly, we need to know how the myriad problems in the creaking Dunedin Hospital are going to be handled in the years before the inpatient building becomes a reality.
What seems to be a whack-a-mole approach to problems is madness and likely to be more expensive in the long run.
If a comprehensive "keeping the lights on" plan has been developed, with proper clinical input, to show how the ongoing risks the existing hospital poses to efficient and safe patient care will be managed and paid for, then let us hear about it.
If there is something more than a hit-and-hope approach to both the old and new hospitals, it should be spelled out.
