"Nothing really changes for us. The fast-track consenting process, once enacted, is available for anyone to apply, not just those developments in the schedules.
"We have already started the Queenstown Lakes District Council process and we’ll make a decision about whether to apply under the Fast-track Approvals Act, once it has been passed in the new year," he told the Wānaka Sun this week.
In March this year, Wānaka residents called for their own regional hospital at a public meeting attended by about 400 people.
Considerable support was also expressed for health developer James Reid’s proposal to develop a new health hub next to the existing Wānaka Lakes Health Centre in Cardrona Valley Rd.
More than 300 placard-carrying Wānaka people marched through the town centre on September 28, in solidarity with the massive street march in Dunedin the same day, which drew an estimated 35,000 people.
Last week Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop and Regional Development Minister Shane Jones announced that Cabinet had approved 149 projects to be included in schedules to the Bill, from a list of 342 projects considered to have significant regional or national benefits.
Mr Saegars said he was comfortable the Wānaka hospital project had merit because the fast-track projects advisory group had recommended it be regarded as a "high priority", alongside six other hospital proposals submitted by Health New Zealand.
"The advisory group recommended seven hospitals as high priority, including Wānaka hospital. The ministers received that advice yet didn’t include any hospitals. It is not just Wānaka hospital that wasn’t listed. No hospitals were.
"Yet just two days later the Prime Minister was making a public statement about wanting to use private health service capacity to shorten public waiting lists, and public-private partnerships to get more hospitals built using private capital.
"This is another example of the mixed messages private capital must negotiate when seeking to work with the public health sector," he said.
An eighth hospital-related project for Silverdale in Auckland was regarded as "out of scope" and also declined.
