Heather du Plessis-Allan: The Government is in Trouble over Dunedin Hospital

The Mike Hosking Breakfast

When it comes to the Dunedin hospital scale back, the Government's in trouble on this.

That protest over the weekend was big. 35,000 people is more than a quarter of Dunedin's population.

If you assume they came from all over the region, which is probably true given the hospital would service the Otago region, it’s still big. It’s 14% of the population.

There are very few issues that would drive that kind of frustration, but health is one of them.

It's because we want to know that there are the medical facilities to save our kid's lives, or our parent's lives.

Or our life.

But this is the reality - we are broke.

New Zealand can’t afford a $3b hospital, and $3b dollar ferries and 64,000 public servants and any number of other things we may want.

We are running an operating deficit every single year. That's basically the household equivalent of spending more every year than you make and just running it on the credit card forever.

You can’t do it.

If you want to know how broke we are listen to the Treasury warning last week.

Dominick Stephens, the Chief Economist there, warned that for us to get back to surplus the Government would have to cut so much spending, and so fast, it would be unprecedented in recent history in New Zealand.

Our debt is out of control, largely thanks to what Grant and Jacinda did during Covid.

Treasury's been warning about our debt levels since 2006. But back then they thought we were heading for net Crown debt of 13% of GDP.

We are now 3 times that. So, we’re broke.

I don’t want to see projects like a hospital scaled back. I don’t want to be sailing on tinpot ferries I’m not sure will make it to the other side.

But you need money to buy and build and we don’t’ have any.

And we need to wake up to that.

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