National, and indeed New Zealand First, made pre-election commitments to return the hospital to its original specifications.
Readers will recall that the Labour Party reneged on their own promises of 2021. They sought to downsize the hospital, only to partially backtrack some months later after much political pressure.
The resulting turmoil and uncertainty caused delays to planning and exposure to cost increases via the rampant inflation of the time.
I consider it a bit rich of local Labour MPs to now be slamming Dr Reti and the coalition government when this drama is of their very own making. Noise, I might add, that was missing at the time when Dr Verrall was originally cutting the build back.
Unfortunately, Dr Reti has inherited a project beset with delays and cost pressures. While the details are highly commercially sensitive, Budget 2024 clearly allocated contingency funding for Dunedin hospital, signalling that our commitment to Otago and Southland residents is unwavering.
The hospital build is also a sign of wider systemic issues.
Both central and local government have increasingly been seen as cash cows in regards to infrastructure projects. So much so, there now appears to be an air of expectation that any project will far outstrip its original costing.
We simply do not have enough resources to allow this debacle to continue. The patience of both taxpayers and ratepayers has been thoroughly exhausted.
The time for a more hardheaded and competent approach to contracting major projects has well and truly come. And with it comes reality.
We are a small country that must accept not every project can be a bespoke build. We need more efficient planning and build methods for commercial projects such as hospitals, bridges or waste treatment plants.
Our intention is to line up a 30-year pipeline of projects and get on with building them, instead of spending years chopping and changing designs and plans, wasting both time and resources.
Although we have inherited a mess, this government fully intends to sort it out.
