Andrew Dickens: Dunedin hospital - do it once and do it right

Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive

With the news cycle dominated by the Nash controversy, the agitation that Marama Davidson's politics always involves and the ruckus over Posey Parker's visit, some very important stories have been kept off the front page.

No story for me right now is bigger than the Government asking Health New Zealand to cut $100 million off the construction budget for the new Dunedin Hospital.

The story could be worse as the project is running $200 million dollars over budget but calling taihoa over a project that's further down the track than so many of their pipedream ideas seems reckless to me.

Already Health New Zealand has publically admitted that the drive to cut $100 million off a $1.5 billion dollar build has delayed the hospital's opening by a year.

A year when costs will only go up even more.

The proposed cuts shave a dozen rooms off the project, a couple of operating theatres and crams labs into tiny workspaces.

No one in Dunedin thinks this is a good idea.

The reason the hospital was originally designed the way it was designed was because that was what was needed. What changes? As I understand it Dunedin is looking an even more growth than was expected at design time.

It's the New Zealand infrastructure malaise. A overarching concern about ballooning budgets that trumps logic.

There is no logic to a $100 million dollar hospital build budget cut when the same Government is proposing tens of billions of dollars of spending on light rail and Harbour Bridges.

There is no logic when the same agency is spending $600 million finding efficiencies that may result in 1600 redundancies. There is no doubt in my mind that the money spent now will be recouped many fold in the future.

If this is a government that is getting back to basics, there is nothing more basic than building legacy hospitals. It's doesn't happen nearly often enough so heed the people of Dunedin and their mayor.

Do it once and do it right.

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