Reti & Levy announcement: 'We didn't cancel something. Please clap.'

When you expect a smack, but get a small lolly instead.

I was just asked about my thoughts on the recent announcement a coupla days ago by Shane ‘Ciga’ Reti and Lester ‘the Destroyer’ Levy that they would not be cancelling the building of the long-planned paediatric outpatient clinics at Whangarei Hospital.

I must start by saying that I’m indeed deeply thankful they are choosing to fund it. The Paediatric clinc at Whangarei is old and decrepit. I’ve have to take my child there before, and all I can say is the paeds staff does miracles in a small patchwork of rooms and add-ons. A colourful hovel, a warren of mouldy small spaces with a little playground and absolutely lovely staff.

I’m thankful they will be getting a few new spaces to work out of. Something like 12 clinic rooms I think. Far less than they needed of course (probably adequate for Northland’s population circa 2000), but far better and more modern than what they’ve got currently.

I’m happy they got funding for their paeds outpatient building. They deserve it, and Northland desperately needs it.

But let’s talk about the press conference/media announcement.

Planning for a new hospital has been around since I arrived in Northland, 17 years ago.

A concrete plan finalised maybe 4 years ago.

It’s not like the paeds outpatient building was just thought up and funded yesterday. It’s been part of a multi-year plan to rebuild the hospital.

So in essence, what these two gentlemen announced, was that they were going to allow the long-planned project to carry on. They weren’t going to cancel the funding for it, and stop the bulldozers in their tracks.

I mean, that’s very good. It’s nice they didn’t cancel the project (so badly needed for so long) in mid-stream.

Given the ferry debacle, where by all reports they cancelled a well-progressed project, lost a billion, got nothing to show for it a year later, and will have to spend another billion (or thereabouts) to come up with some other more expensive and worse solution. Compared to that, I suppose them not cancelling a small outpatient building is something we should be thankful for.

But once I’m done thanking them for funding the build, I’ve got to ask why.

Why are they proceeding with this project? Some possibilities:

1. It’s Shane's home region. And with all the big stuff they’ve been doing to healthcare, and public housing, and jobs in Northland, they need something that looks positive, even if it’s small.

2. Northland locals remember him saying, on the day he won the election, that he might shunt the hospital rebuild off until after this government’s first term. He caught hell for that, and backed up. Our healthcare in Northland is a sore spot, due to widespread poverty our outcomes are among the worst in the nation. It’s no coincidence that Northland was traditionally always a National stronghold. But even locals can only be pushed so far. When you’re waiting a year for an MRI, but the private radiology groups have a couple, you’ve got to ask yourself who privitisation will really help. People are having that conversation know, and Reti and Levy, the masters of privatisation, know it. They’ve got to be seen doing something for Northland. And now they have. This should buy them a month or two of cover while they continue their “Defund, destabilise, and privatise” steamroller.

3. When you’ve spent billions on taxcuts that favour the rich, and 2.9 billion to make mortgages easier for real estate investors to afford, you need a good health story once in a while to offset the bad austerity stuff: losing prescription subsidies, losing building jobs with a big pullback on council housing and infrastructure projects, and a health system that has been enfeebled by funding that didn’t keep up with inflation or population growth . . . let alone the needs of a growing region or an aging populace.

4. Handshakes and baby-kissing: politicians know what makes headlines. It’s why you see Shane in the media all the time “visibly doctoring”. Holding a baby while wearing a stethoscope, that sort of thing. To remind people he’s a real doctor, even though he’s been a politician for over a decade, having levitated out of GP practice another decade or so before that, into dermatology and then informatics.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/536640/no-plans-for-scaling-back-of-whangarei-s-hospital-redevelopment

At the end of the day, they didn’t stop the paeds outpatient clinics, and that’s good.

But the fact remains that Dunedin Hospital, and a dozen other hospital rebuilds, could get the axe.

(Probably not Dunedin, because their public response of 35,000 people was resounding. But communities shouldn’t have to rely on marches and chants and hand-painted signs to ensure every NZer has a public hospital that is capable of meeting their basic needs. If a government can’t keep hospitals and schools functioning, is it really a government anymore?)

And the Whangarei Hospital rebuild, needed for 30 years, still won’t occur until 2031.

In politician years, that's a lifetime away. And a lot could happen between now and then.

Surely it will have become someone else’s problem.

Hopefully someone with a high-priority plan for rebuilding this nation’s degraded essential public services.

-Dr Gary Payinda