Southern MPs clashed in Parliament yesterday during an urgent debate on the Dunedin hospital cuts, the government’s announcement being either a callous betrayal or fiscal responsibility, depending which side of the House they sat on.
Green Taieri list MP Scott Willis said Dunedinites were furious about the likely scaling back of what was promised to be a state-of-the-art hospital.
"We can’t trust this government one iota. They slither and squirm away from any clear answer," he said.
"You know what ticks me off? Suggesting that $3billion for health for the deep South is unaffordable — $3billion for a hospital complex, when the government tells us that $10billion to explore a possible tunnel for Wellington is cheap as chips."
"In fact, one of the first major capital budget decisions we had to make for the health sector was to put aside an additional $300million for the Dunedin hospital," Ms Willis said.
Labour health spokeswoman Dr Ayesha Verrall, who trained in Dunedin Hospital as a junior doctor, disputed claims of a $3b blowout.
"The word ‘$3billion’ is not in the report; it’s nowhere. For those of you who got up with your government talking points and said that, go into the report and try and find it. This is a manufactured crisis about the cost of this hospital.
"These cuts to New Zealand’s hospitals are about the bad choices that this government has made. This is a deeply cynical political playbook that we see from them over there again and again."
Dunedin Labour MP Rachel Brooking, in whose electorate the new hospital is being built, defended its location.
"If anybody knows Dunedin, you know that there are many hills and there is not an abundance of flat land that is ready to be built on with significant vertical buildings. So this was a choice; it was in the middle of town. It was a choice that was made.
"What do we get when National is in government? We just get cuts. And that is all we can expect from this government: cuts, cuts, cuts."
"... Knowing that they had no intention of ever delivering on the promise of Dunedin hospital. That is callous politics. It is throwing the people of the South under the bus."
None of National’s southern MPs spoke in the debate, but New Zealand First Taieri list MP Mark Patterson did. He said that he would not sugar-coat news that no-one in southern New Zealand wanted to hear.
"Three billion dollars as a cost blowout is an order of magnitude above the $1.2b to $1.4b where this project started out ... this is what we’ve got to face, particularly in an environment where we have got an economy that has been in recession for two years.
"That is the stark reality we face in those economic conditions."
