Southern Say

Southern Say has highlighted the many attempts by our local MPs to get any indication at all from Health Minister Shane Reti that he'll deliver a National pledge to restore plans for the new Dunedin hospital (mostly) to the way they were.

Parliament is in recess and the Prime Minister is sunning himself in Asia — which he may be very grateful for given the heat his government is feeling about its long-promised plans to pare back the public service.

In November 2019, two weary years after he became the minister for regional economic development, Shane Jones came to Dunedin and dished out $60 million of tax payers’ money on a variety of projects.

It does not get much more local for us at the Otago Daily Times than the business before Parliament’s economic development, science and innovation select committee this week.

Tourism and Hospitality Minister Matt Doocey recently threw his weight behind efforts to restore international air travel to Dunedin. But as NZ's first ever Minister of Mental Health, he may leave an even larger imprint.

Nestled down near the bottom of the ministerial list on the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet website sits, almost last but certainly not least, Taieri NZ First list MP Mark Patterson.

Earlier this week a reader emailed to ask what the enthusiastic proponents of electoral reform in the 1980s and ’90s made of the seemingly interminable delay in restoring politics as normal.