Thousands march against ‘broken promise’ as new Dunedin hospital project faces massive cuts
An estimated 35,000 people have marched through the streets of Dunedin, outraged by government plans to downgrade the city’s new hospital project due to budget blowouts.
On Thursday, Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop and Health Minister Shane Reti announced that the cost of the project has escalated to an estimated $3 billion from an original estimate of between $1.2b-$1.4b in 2017.
An independent review, commissioned by the Government, concluded that the project could not proceed within the current budget, they said.
Hours after the Government’s announcement, Dunedin Mayor Jules Radich condemned the proposal, saying it was “completely unacceptable for Dunedin and the people of the South”.
He warned that the Government’s plans amount to “clinical cuts and a downgrade” of the critical regional hospital for the lower South Island.
Let’s be very clear here…
…National promised to build the Dunedin Hospital, but then decided they couldn’t.
Why?
They have $14billion for borrowed tax cuts.
They have $5million for boot camps that don’t work.
They have $4million for a Treaty Principles Referendum that will not pass.
They have a Billion for Ferries that are worse than the ones we booked.
They have tens of millions for ACTs new Red Tape Palace.
They have $200million for the Tobacco Industry.
They have $3.1billion for the richest landlords.
But they don’t have any money for a hospital in Dunedin.
Let’s be very clear.
The cuts in Public Health are a manufactured crisis to justify free market reforms and donor class regulation changes.
In the Budget, National allocated just 2.9% increase to health services but inflation was 3.3% and population growth 2.6% while an ageing population adds more to costs.
National gave 2.9% for health but we needed 8% to stand still, blaming the Hospitals for budget short falls that National were perfectly well aware of is an unbelievable scam being perpetrated upon the NZ public and it will be this manufactured crisis bullshit that National will use across every public service they haven’t already slashed to pay for the $2.9billion rich landlord tax loop hole!
We will see this throughout their term. The Government will underfund each service and then demand privatisation as the solution when the public complain about the service!
.
The people of Dunedin deserve better.
All the Southern people dependent on that Hospital deserve better.
New Zealanders deserve better.
This greedy venal right Government is focused on looking after their donors interests, not the common good.
If Dunedin Hospital was a packet of cigarettes, this Government would have saved it by now.
CB: “Ummmmmmmmmmmmm.
So ’bout that Hospital Dunedin.
We have decided to spend the money on tax cuts and rich landlords instead.
Yes, if Dunedin Hospital was a packet of cigarettes we would have saved it by now.
Dr Reti you want to take over from here?
SR: No.
CB: Ok, so any questions from the media?
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They must be brain dead if they cant see that the cost will have gone up since it was costed 7 years ago .After all we had 2 years of national party donner business gouging the construction industry with contracts doubling in those two years .The original price was $10000 per sqm and now the actual cost is $30000 per sqm as a result of that gouging .One only has to look at how much the last government had to stump up to finish Tans gully and the holiday hiway due to that price gouging for PPP builds that are infact private roads .
This government is totaly out of its depth here and now .It will never be cheaper to build than right now .To even consider that to be the case is a fallacy .I cant wait to see how much the cost of the skoda ferris balloons out to .My guess is $3 billion just for thr boats and they wont be ships .
Let’s see where the numbers are coming from. According to the Mayor the government are throwing in costs that are not related to this project. Given their track record of Bullshit my money is on the mayor
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/529179/nurses-union-warns-people-will-die-in-downgrade-of-new-dunedin-hospital?
The best speech I heard on the Dunedin Hospital fiasco was by Finance Minister Nicola Willis.
Not only did she sum up the History of the project from about 2016/17 but also the incompetence of the Labour led Government from the time Jacinda Ardern became Prime Minister until last years election. Their incompetence and their torpedoing of the PPP in place prior to the 2017 election being huge factors in the current shambles.
Thank goodness there is now a competent, ACT driven, government on the job to solve the problem.
You obviously don’t listen to many speeches if you think Nicola gave the best speech on Dunedin Hospital. She will be known as the finance minister who crashed the NZ economy is my prediction about her.
What a crock of shit pdm. You missed the bit about this hospital having cross party support within a year ago.
what a crock of shit
How dare Luxon release his todo list when we have the ferries and hospitals being ignored . There is something very wrong with Aotearoa New Zealand that we are enabling this load of s**t that is this government.
The right wing is rewarding every one who voted National, Winston First and ACT.
The right wing is punishing everyone who voted Labour, Green or Maori.
Winners always divi up the spoils of political war.
Dunedin voted in a Labour MP.
So their hospital gets down graded.
It’s politics.
It is also worth mentioning that New Zealand’s first and best medical school at Otago University needs a good teaching hospital, for the students, for the staff, and most of all for the southern people who have benefitted through having some of the best brains in the country to address their health issues.
Luxon wouldn’t know this, as he appears to have a deficiency of grey matter, and the few brain cells he has seem to malfunction time after time after time. He should never been appointed to Air New Zealand in the first place. This, IMO, has misled dumbos into thinking that he wasn’t just the soap salesman, which IMO, he is.
Dunners will get the hospital it needs rather than the hospital it wants.
Showing your ignorance again Andrew.
Needs and Wants in this case is the same thing.
THE DUNEDIN HOSPITAL SERVICES HALF THE SOUTH ISLAND.
It is also a TEACHING HOSPITAL for the medical school .
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/health/retrofitting-old-hospital-unworkable-documents?
On other words, half of bugger all.
I’ve got to the point now where I think the NZ electorate deserve what they get and my empathy for the country as a whole has become very thin. You vote in a center right government that states clearly ahead of time that it is going to eviscerate the public sector in order to deliver tax cuts – don’t act shocked when those things happen.
The government is doing exactly what it said it would do and nobody should be surprised – especially anyone in Dunedin who voted for the current coalition.
More fool anyone who believed the Luxon promise to build the hospital as is while also promising to deliver massive cuts to public spending. If you fell for that you are a fucking moron and deserve every bit of the cold indifference you now face from the government.
NZer’s voted for ‘freedom’ from those pesky back office bureaucrats and now they are getting it and they can spend their $5 tax cut on private health care of their own choosing.
There’s a well known saying about having your cake and eating it. We can all eat as much cake as we want but we aren’t getting new hospitals.
Thank you Champagne my sentiments exactly because at the end of the day it’s all about racism and greed. Otago university et.al send their doctors all over Aotearoa NZ, so this hospital affects all of us. Where was Penny Simpson on Saturday ????
Evidently there is a huge budget blow out, so until we actually see the final figures we are all in the dark ????
Facts here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkzLzAgC_HI
The hospital has been a shambles from start to finish. Back in 2017 National announced that it would be completed between 2024 and 2027. One week after she assumed that leadership of the Labour Party Jacinda then went after the low hanging fruit and announced that construction would underway by 2020. A consortia was appointed led by former Labour MP Pete Hodgkinson and consisting of representatives from the Dunedin City Council, the Otago Regional Council, Ngai Tahu, and the the Southern DHP. Unfortunately this group was conspicuous by its absence of hospital building experience, or much practical experience of any sort. The site they choose was contaminationed, sandwiched between 3 state highways, and a flood risk. It was however close to the university and coincided with the DCC’s war on cyclists and a discernable, if unspoken, snobbery about building anything significant south of the Oval. This is galling as the site of the former Hillside Workshops was then available but no serious discussion was had. In a nutshell the reason this project has stalled is because after 7 years so little has been accomplished. If more had been accomplished during the last 7 years a tipping point may have been reached where it made sense to continue.
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