PM questioned on hospital and bypass plans

Thursday, 9 May 2024

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon stood by the “phased approach” to changes to the long-awaited rebuild of Nelson Hospital, but wouldn’t be pinned down on a date for the rebuild to start.

Luxon made a visit to the Waimea Community Dam on Thursday, where he faced questions from reporters as to whether the Government could afford the $1 billion project.

The prime minister said the Government was very committed to “upgrading” the Nelson Hospital, and that the budget hadn’t changed, nor had the bed count.

“But what is changing … is probably the phasing of the development, rather than doing it in one big set bang piece.

Luxon said the hospital was “on track from a cost schedule and time point of view”, but didn’t give a date when asked when a build might actually start.

“We've been in government for 162 days,” he told reporters.

“We're working our way through a number of workforce and infrastructure challenges across healthcare. We're working at pace.”

The new plan for the hospital is for “a series of smaller builds” instead of a large acute services building.

Health New Zealand revealed on Monday it had switched tack on the hospital development after reviewing “lessons learned across major health projects”.

Few had any idea that the rescope had taken place. Decisions on how the change had been communicated were ultimately for Health New Zealand, Luxon said, though he conceded “there might be a job to do” in terms of directing Health Zealand to do “better consultation”.

The PM was also grilled on the timings of Hope Bypass. In July, the National Party gave a four to 10-year timeframe to build it.

Luxon said the project was “locked into the plan”, and the Government was orientating transport spending into roads, rather than other forms of transport.

“We also know that we've got to be able to reach out and do public private partnerships in quite a different and new way,” he said.

Asked about Rocks Rd, which a reporter referred to as “a State Highway that has to close if a high tide coincides with a stormy or windy evening or day”, Luxon said there were “lots of significant projects up and down this country”.

Building the Waimea Dam, he said, must have been “tough and difficult and pretty painful at times”. But it enabled growth, housing and provided certainty for horticulturists to invest, he said.

New Zealand needed to “make sure that regulation and settings are in a place which actually encourages investment to New Zealand”.

“At the moment, New Zealand, is a place that has not been attractive for foreign capital to this country. We need domestic capital to partner on projects like this, we need foreign capital to partner on other infrastructure projects as well.

“So we've got a major reset happening in the infrastructure space, because we need to get things done.”

Tasman mayor Tim King said his “greatest frustration” was that the council as local government effectively underwrote the Crown.

“That doesn’t seem to be the right mix of risk and responsibility,” King said.

“In effect, we carry all the can for everything that overruns on this project, the Crown share, the irrigators’ share. They have been very good at coming to the party with their share at each step … but it all rests on us.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article had the Prime Minister saying the budget for Nelson Hospital had changed. He said neither the budget, nor the bed count had changed. Amended: 9am, May 10.