Frequently Asked Questions

We want the hospital to be built as promised. There has been significant investment in the new hospital already, and not building it as planned creates clinical risks. It means there’ll be workarounds, and people will fall through the gaps. The Government is trying to save money by not building the hospital as promised, but it will be the people of the South who pay. We need to act now!

With 350,000 people in the Otago and Southland region, the Southern Hospital services the largest region of any tertiary hospital in New Zealand. The hospital has an extensive helicopter rescue service that supports people in the regions. It’s also a teaching hospital, training the professionals who go on to serve in the health system throughout New Zealand.

• There are no significant cost advantages in refurbishing the old hospital – and the lifetime cost would be 50% more expensive
• The building would be unusable after a serious earthquake
• The façade has concrete cancer and the costs of remediation are high and ongoing
• The old hospital can’t meet modern requirements. The column placement and low ceilings are unsuitable for 21st century equipment
• Retrofitting would require emptying two floors at a time. It would be difficult to decant that quantity of patients somewhere else
• The outpatients block is two city blocks away, and the distance would create inefficiencies
• The building is inadequate for current practice. There is not enough power, the air conditioning is old, and the building cannot handle the air flow required to manage infection control

There was a small (less than $50m) cost advantage to building there as the land did not need to be purchased – but the cost of demolishing and replacing the existing buildings would have made it a more expensive option overall. The location is also less convenient for clinical staff and students. Teaching hospitals are usually near students.

• It could cost as much to downscale it as it would to build it as promised
• Changing the design will only result in further delays
• Changes to the promised design will reduce clinical safety
• In the slow-moving public health context, if we don’t build it right the first time, it’ll take a long time to fix

• This figure has been arrived at by adding in things that were never part of the agreed scope or budget, e.g. a pathology laboratory ($45M) and parking (which can be delivered privately), and decommissioning the old hospital ($325M)
• The costs of addressing ground contamination, mitigating flood risk and navigating busy roads would have been incurred in any central location. These costs have already been dealt with and the foundations have already been built
• The Government is not revealing the current cost to build the hospital as planned. Reading through the redacted Rust Report, it appears to be about $2.2B

• Hospitals are expensive. Every new tertiary hospital built in New Zealand will be the most expensive tertiary hospital ever built in New Zealand
• There has been enormous building cost inflation since the last large hospital build in Christchurch a decade ago
• There are few contractors in New Zealand capable of delivering large infrastructure projects
• In context, the Southern Hospital build is not expensive or extravagant. The hospital has around 410-421 overnight beds, 53 ED beds and 15 theatres. By contrast, the new Adelaide hospital will have 414 beds, 43 ED beds and 14 theatres, and has a budget of $3.4B

• $216M on tax cuts for the tobacco industry
• $2.9B for the landlord tax break
• $2B for Petone to Granada highway
• $3B for four Poseidon P-8 Surveillance planes
• $300M break fees and $424M sunk costs for cancelling the ferry upgrades