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10:19 am, September 28th, 2024 - 9 comments
Categories: chris bishop, health, making shit up, Media, Shane Reti, spin, the praiseworthy and the pitiful, you couldn't make this shit up -
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National is getting lots and lots of flack about its announcement that the plans for Dunedin Hospital are going to be scaled back.
And it deserves every piece of opprobrium that is being thrown at it.
Because on the scale of cynical breaches of pre election promises this is right up there with the worst.
The Dunedin Hospital rebuild has some history.
National had promised the hospital for years but never committed any money to it.
Then Labour actually committed to the project and set aside budget for it.
There were cost pressures and at one stage Labour proposed reducing the number of beds, cutting back two operating theatres and reducing MRI scanners from three to two.
This was still a significant improvement on what is currently there. Bed numbers would have increased from 367 to 398 and the number of operating theatres would have increased from 17 to 26.
But after strong opposition Labour found extra money and promised that the hospital as originally envisaged would be built. Bed numbers would be 410 and operating theatres would be 28.
It also used the fast track legislation to push the consent through. And construction of the Outpatients’ Building has started and the building is scheduled to be operational in 2026.
National however saw the opportunity of an attack. The details are set out in this piece by Mike Houlahan in the Otago Daily Times:
The main event of Mr Luxon’s visit was earlier in the day, when National finally came off the fence and gave a definitive answer about what it would do with the new Dunedin hospital.
For months now its Dunedin list MP, Michael Woodhouse, has been decrying cuts and clawbacks to the project, but has not responded when asked the natural follow-up: “So what would your party do about it?” The answer, as of yesterday, is reverse them.
The reluctance to commit to that course of action has been somewhat understandable: the project’s costs continue to soar and National’s prospective finance minister, Nicola Willis, will have baulked at signing a blank and potentially very much more expensive cheque. That policy void has proven a handicap for Mr Woodhouse though, who has not been able to mount as fierce an attack as he might have liked to so far on the Government on the issue .
In the scheme of things the $30 million National estimates it would take to reverse the cutbacks from the project’s detailed business case is not large, although it feels a somewhat heroic assumption given the ever-increasing cost to build the new hospital and never decreasing impact delays and inflation are having on that cost.
The commitment to fund the extra beds was set out in crystal clear terms in National’s policy document:
A National government will build the hospital Dunedin needs, delivering all the beds, operating theatres and radiology services that Labour removed.
The cost of this commitment is $29.5 million and will be fully funded as part of the next National government’s programme of capital investment.
This will cover 23 inpatient beds, two operating theatres, and a PET scanner at Dunedin Hospital.
It has been six long years with almost no progress in Dunedin and meanwhile, the health of patients suffers. The South deserves a hospital that will be fit for purpose for generations, not a patch up job.
The previous National Government committed to delivering the hospital that people in the South needed, and we will follow through with that promise.
National knows how to get things done, and it is past time to accelerate this painfully slow-moving project.
This statement is so cynical. Labour had already agreed to reinstate the extra beds and operating tables and the MRI scanner. Labour had set aside the funding and fast tracked the consent application and had started construction of one of the new buildings.
And National had not done a thing during its last term to advance the hospital.
The problem for National and the main reason for the budget increase is that construction costs have soared. This Checkpoint article suggests that they have increased by 49% since 2017.
Anyone who thought about the issue would realise that the costs would increase and more budget would be needed.
National needed cover however and commissioned the Rust Report which is somewhat ironic because National regularly accused Labour of being out of control because of the number of reviews that it commissioned.
The difference however is that Labour commissioned reports to do things, National commissions them to stop things.
The report does not quite say what Chris Bishop suggests that it says. You could conclude that Ayesha Verrall was right when she determined that Bishop was pulling figures out of part of his gastroenterological system.
This graph suggests that total costs could be in the vicinity of $2.6 billion.
And strangely this includes additional workforce costs. With a growing and ageing population workforce requirements will increase. This is why health budgets need to be increased every year without fail and why this year’s increase, which was below the rate of inflation, is essentially a cut. It should not be part of a construction budget.
The recommendations in the report contradict National’s assertions:
The report concluded that the delivery of the project as currently scoped and planned is probably not achievable within the approved budget. But it had these extra line items incuding staff costs and refurbishment of the existing building and the pathology lab which should be funded elsewhere.
Radio New Zealand has posted this article asking if National checked its numbers before it made its Dunedin Hospital promises.
The answer would appear to be a resounding NO.
Meanwhile Dunedin needs a new hospital.
And the construction industry is crying out for contracts and projects.
This is deeply, deeply cynical politics by National and it will hurt them big time.
And the question has to be asked, can we trust National to do anything that it has promised?
On Q & A in March 2023 there was a discussion between Jack Tame and the Infrastructure Commission’s Ross Copland why infrastructure budgets always blow out. Think hospitals, ferries. Only 10 minutes long and well worth it.
On similar lines quite recently, City Rail Link CEO Sean Sweeney speaks about why New Zealand seems to struggle to complete large infrastructure projects on time and on budget.
geez its NOT the teachers that need help with maths.
They are punishing Dunedin for not voting for them.
From the pedants corner… It is flak, not flack. A flack is a PR stooge. Flak is a borrowed acronym from the German Flieger Abwehr Kanonen, literally "anti-flyer cannon" which replaced "Ack Ack" during WW2 as the term to describe anti aircraft gunfire….
Anyway, the southerners will go bananas over this – I am sure Ad will update us on the reaction! It is a straight up reneging on a clear election promise which in retrospect was clearly always a lie given Luxon's and Willis's commitment to austerity.
Politically they may calculate it as doing little damage, since Dunedin is solid red/Green anyway and the rest of Otago would – and arguably frequently has – elected blue rosette hominids who strayed away from the main evolutionary tree some time ago.
But ah, but once you've safely got you rather dopey dairy farmer as local MP, wither might go the party votes…?
Was amusing seeing our RW mayor genuinely surprised the Nats reneged on this after they had promised him they wouldn't (face eating leopard etc). & thank goodness we have a genuine local news paper, thank you Sir Julian! I am at work today but I've been sent pictures from packed busses on their way down to the march to the packed march itself, & it's a nice day outside too.
300+ out in Wanaka.
Silver-haired bourgeois earthquake.
Never been on a march this slow or with such expensive glasses.
So good to be on a march again – I've missed them!
Interesting approach by the government. Not surprising, really, given that they were elected on a clear anti-public sector platform and lower taxes.
Put aside the impact on peoples health – I don't think people vote on the basis of their public health system or they wouldn't elect center right governments that promise to cut funding.
The economics is what is fascinating – what is the governments aim in cancelling or downsizing multiple infrastructure and maintenance projects across transport, schools and hospitals? I believe the intention is to deliberately weaken the construction sector by withdrawing public sector work and forcing the industry to be more competitive – less available work should result in lower costs from labor, business and supply chains.
In theory this under utilization of the building and construction sector should help the private sector by providing lower cost productive capacity.
It will not be used to build up public infrastructure – I think those days are over for NZ voters and it appears to be a choice that they are on board with.
The good people of Dunedin and the lower South Island can use their tax cuts to support the private health insurance and medical sectors. Which I think is part of the governments growth agenda – more clients and thus investment in private health as the public system is gradually degraded over time.