MP's View: Here’s to a happier year for the South

What a terrible year 2024 has been for government decisions affecting Dunedin.

The scaling back of the Dunedin Hospital rebuild is appalling and has rightly been met with community outrage.

National has backtracked on its commitment to build the hospital it promised during the election cycle, opting either to scale back the inpatients building or retrofit the old hospital. Both are terrible ideas.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins has made it clear that when Labour wins the next election, we will build the hospital we promised when we were ingovernment.

Labour’s promise was and remains a hospital with 398 beds when opened, and a further 12 to be shelled (410 in total), compared to the current hospital’s total of 367.

It will have 23 operating theatres when opened, and a further three shelled (26 in total), compared to the current hospital’s 17.

It will also include three MRI machines (one shelled), and a shelled-out space for the future instalment of a PET scanner.

I have seen recent criticism of cuts made by the Labour government before last year’s election.

Labour’s cuts did not compromise access to healthcare. They delivered savings removing a pavilion building and a link bridge between the outpatient and inpatient buildings (there is already another bridge included in the designs). Some proposed changes were reversed.

The National government’s options will cut clinical services. That means fewer beds and fewer operating theatres.

National’s cost-cutting measures have also delayed the project, and according to one economist, costs are rising by about $100,000 per day.

This is money that should be spent improving healthcare.

The National government claims it is being fiscally responsible, but its numbers don’t add up.

Ministers have inflated our proposed hospital’s costs by including digital infrastructure and carparking that would have been paid for whether there was an upgrade or not. Let’s just call it what it is: a broken promise.

I would like to take the chance to wish everyone in the South a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

Here’s hoping 2025 brings with it better fortunes for the South, a hospital the region so desperately needs, a reversal of funding cuts to our social service providers working with children in need, improving our natural environment and embracing tertiary education.

Meri kirihimete!

- Rachel Brooking