Like Act party leader David Seymour’s new Ministry of Regulation, this highly hush-hush department could well be yet another personal fantasy of a Cabinet minister.
It’s a tried and well-tested tactic in employment contract negotiations to deliberately go too high or too low with figures, in the hope of ending up somewhere in the middle at a point acceptable to both sides.
Such a strategy shows there can be quite a bit of looseness around numbers themselves. Which seems somehow incongruous, given that mathematics reflects objectivity and, arguably, the truth.
Of course, like everything else which is used for evidence to support a certain viewpoint, it is the way those numbers are wielded which matters.
Three billion dollars has, in the past week, suddenly become one of those figures which has lodged into the brains of southerners. And, unfortunately, the more the amount is bandied around, the more it attains a kind of currency and truth which it probably does not deserve to have.
The $3 billion figure, for those who have somehow missed it or successfully managed to avoid all news and talk, is the government’s latest projection of the cost of the new Dunedin hospital, which currently has a $1.88b budget.
The $3b flew to Dunedin with Health Minister Dr Shane Reti and Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop last Thursday on their fleeting visit to disappoint and anger.
While we were fortunate that the two ministers left soon after dropping their bombshell that the new hospital would cost too much and cuts were essential, the $3b has unfortunately stayed on.
And so hundreds of thousands of people around the South, including medical leaders, local body politicians and journalists, are now homing in on that figure like a moth to a flickering candle.
It is quite possible some in the government might now be wishing that figure had never left the tarmac in Wellington, given the whole heap of trouble it is buying for them.
Then again, it could have been a deliberate ploy to confuse and obstruct. There could be much rubbing of hands with glee that the amount which has not yet been verified, at least publicly, is becoming "fact".
Before opening its mouth, any genuine government with the best of intentions for the public would have had all the relevant documents ready for immediate release which showed the cost totalling around $3b. As it is, adding up the quoted costs quickly becomes a murky exercise as to what may or may not be included.
Ministers must be very, very sure of their facts to bandy about the $3b figure as justification for a hospital downgrade. If the figure is not a real thing, there is probably a lot of frantic buzzing around the Beehive right now to see how they can get the figures to add up to that.
This is by no means the first time Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his ilk have come up with a figure or data which has later been discredited, forcing an embarrassing climb-down and a loss of trust.
Former Southern Partnership Group chairman, Labour health minister and Dunedin North MP Pete Hodgson has accurately described the $3b as "sophistry" and "nonsense", and an attempt to outrage the rest of the country by making it a valid figure.
It is incontrovertible that the cost has blown out. But if it turns out the $3b figure is correct, it still pales in significance compared with the government’s $3.9b — dare we call it $4b?–pothole fund, and the $10b potentially earmarked for a new road tunnel in Wellington.
If it turns out the figure is indeed just snake oil or clumsy Swedish rounding, the current level of anger among southerners at the government will ramp up even higher.
Is it possible to put a price on a broken promise? The damage to what is left of this government’s reputation in the South is probably irreparable anyway.
But for all our sakes: show us the figures.
