Media in the thick of Dunedin Hospital 'blowout' backlash

Local media helped to drive a big public backlash against the government's u-turn on promised plans to rebuild Dunedin Hospital. But should media obliged to report the issue fairly also side with citizens in campaigns?

"Why can't you guys find a billion bucks just to get these guys what they want?" the Prime Minister was asked on Newstalk ZB last Monday - after a huge crowd had taken to Dunedin's streets last weekend in protest at the government rolling back its commitment to rebuild the city's hospital.

"It started off at $1.2 billion. It ended up going up to $1.6b. We put another $300m into it and now we've got a latest review suggesting it's going to be approaching $3b. That would be without doubt, the most expensive hospital in the history of the southern hemisphere," Christopher Luxon replied.

Last week's announcement about "revising the project specification in scope" was less explicit.

"It's now possible it could approach $3b, which would make it one of the most expensive hospitals ever built in the southern hemisphere," Health Minister Shane Reti had said.

It is hard to fact-check the price tags of foreign hospitals but the biggest one in our half of the globe - and the world's third-largest hospital overall - is the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in South Africa.

In 2020 the local govt there invested in a brand new 500-bed intensive care unit there in response to the Covid pandemic. It was up and running by February 2021.

But others were not convinced by the number the government cited for the total bill to build Dunedin Hospital.

The big bill

Clutha District mayor Bryan Cadogan told Checkpoint that Otago mayors had been given "assurances that the promises would be kept" just two weeks earlier.

"They would have known then that it's an inflationary period and they're going to do $14b of tax relief. But, you know this 3 billion? A nice, round figure. But as it stands, it has not been verified."

Not for want of trying from some journalists.

Last week, Phil Pennington reported RNZ had been trying since 1 May to find out what was going on.

"A request for the key project documents should have unearthed them by early June. It did not. Te Whatu Ora promised to deliver them by 1 August. The next day it apologised."

The announcement came before RNZ got any of these documents, he reported last week.

"The mayor Jules Radich and people of Dunedin are saying that $3b ... includes things like a car park and a pathology building. And these things were already outside the scope of this, and that seems to be a fair criticism," Pennington told The Detail on Monday.

"We've got some big other reports coming up in the next three months, like a quantity surveyors one that's going to give us a much firmer guide."

The government statement said the Independent Expert Readiness Review (also known as the Rust Review) it had commissioned concluded "the delivery of the NDH project as currently scoped and planned is probably not achievable within the approved budget".

But it didn't mention $3b as the cost.

Scoop.co.nz columnist Gordon Campbell said references to "a blowout of the budget" were misleading when he looked at the available figures.

If the original cost in 2017 was estimated at $1.2b to $1.4, inflation alone would have added about $250 million to that in the seven years since, he reckoned.

"The increase in costs for Dunedin's new hospital has been the absolutely normal, bog-standard cost escalation you would expect to see seven years down the track ... and the government has added extra items to exaggerate the size of its cost burden," he said.

On Politik.co.nz, Richard Harman also noted the same budget-boosting additions for car parks, a pathology lab and decommissioning the existing site.

But he said it is unclear why more car parking is needed, while a Te Whatu Ora review in 2023 did not approve a new pathology laboratory and other hospitals here operate without one.

He said a business case from 2021 concluded it was not economic to repair or refurbish two key buildings - and the actual cost of remedying the whole site would depend on Health NZ and the government's plans for those.

Last weekend, Otago Daily Times political editor Mike Houlihan said it was difficult to quantify the actual cost overruns - but sources had told him several months ago "the true budget had already crested $2 billion - and it wouldn't have become any cheaper since then".

Bigger than Dunedin

While some party politically minded pundits speculated the government was prepared to infuriate Dunedin's Labour- and Green-leaning voters, the ODT's Mike Houlihan pointed out the hospital services the entire lower South Island.

"On any given day a quarter or so of the patients in it are from the National-held electorates in Invercargill, Southland and Waitaki," he wrote in the ODT.

On Monday, the Westport News - one of few remaining independent newspapers in the country - said 1500 people gathered at Victoria Square to protest. About 4000 people live in Westport all up.

Reefton held a protest march at its former hospital site at the same time as Westport's march.

The paper also said that Saturday marked the end of urgent GP clinics on the West Coast on weekends. Primary care patients will now have to rely on telehealth.

Te Rau Kawakawa/Buller Hospital has been shut for almost a month since opening in May 2023, the Westport News reported. And Buller's one ambulance is often outside the district transferring patients from Westport to Greymouth.

They also marched in the Southern Lakes area.

"I don't think there's ever been such a big protest march in Wānaka. It's not just the people of Dunedin who rely on the Dunedin hospital upgrade, but the people of Queenstown, Wānaka and Cromwell," Peter Newport of local news service Crux pointed out on Nine to Noon on Wednesday.

But the biggest protest by far was in Dunedin - where local media were already activated.

Turning up the temperature

The local hosts at The Breeze - Damian Newell and Hannah Wilkins - urged listeners to march the day before.

But the most intense coverage and commentary was in the Otago Daily Times.

The day after the government u-turn, the front page was a single, stark picture of the hospital site and the word 'ABANDONED'. The government decision was analysed and criticised over five more pages inside.

In its editorial, the ODT told readers: "We want our hospital. All of our hospital. As was promised. Get out there and march."

An estimated 35,000 people did. 1 News that night called it "an uprising in the south".

"Build it once, build it right" was the strident headline in Monday's ODT editorial.

"Saturday's protest cannot be a one hit wonder. Keeping up the momentum south of the Waitaki will be vital. Kia kaha."

Stirring stuff - and there was much more inside the paper too.

But what to do now about the hospital is still a live issue - and it will need to be reported accurately and fairly to the region's readers.

Can the ODT do that now it has taken its citizens' side in the campaign - and taken so strongly against the current government?

It printed No More Cuts posters - and a picture on Facebook of even its own staff wielding them in a post urging people to bring them to the march last weekend.

"That was a decision by the company Allied Press that we were going to support this," ODT editor Paul McIntyre told Mediawatch.

"We did the photo as a senior management at Allied Press to support the march. Yes, there were some editorial staff, but it was a matter of representing the strength of feeling amongst the community."

Taking sides?

The mayor and city council were already in campaign mode - and started campaigns to stop the cuts in 2023 too. Should the local paper and publisher Allied Press be campaigning on an issue they are also reporting?

"We're not involved in that way. They're setting up a steering group, and I've been invited to go on that but I said no [because] editorial ethics preclude it. I wouldn't want to be on that kind of steering group," McIntyre, who is also chief editor at Allied Press, said.

"Being briefed about that is the key thing so that we know what they're going to do - as you would with any kind of news story. But we certainly are keeping separate from that.

"I think it was also the shock of the minister's announcement when they came down. Everyone thought maybe they were coming down to pacify things ahead of the march - but there were words like 'bombshell announcement' afterwards.

"[The government] always will get a fair shake from us, and we're always approaching them for comment. We have been from the beginning. We have been fair and we are now. That will continue."

One ODT editorial accused the government of "divide and rule tactics" because ministers had said other hospitals might miss out if the bill for Dunedin is too high. A fair point?

"We understand that. Governments have a choice of what they will spend on and ... experts don't believe that that figure is right at $3 billion. And let's not forget, this is the southern region. It's not just about Dunedin.

"We had a really good source saying there was clearly going to be cutbacks on what the government had said they would honour. We've actually been running stories for the last few months about that.

"I don't see it as a political kind of thing. Labour had done the same. We will be continuing the stories because of things that have been that have come out in the last few days. I don't know where they got $3b figure from - and also saying there are 'two options'."

If the government approves anything less than the complete rebuild, will the ODT go back into campaign mode?

"If that's a feeling of the community and we're in tune with them, then absolutely we support that. But we will always be fair."