Soper: Councils not joining protest are 'absolute idiots'
“The parts of the region who are deciding they won’t join in a protest are being absolute idiots."
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A former Southern District Health board member has labelled southern councils not backing a Dunedin Hospital protest campaign “absolute idiots”.
Lesley Soper - speaking in her current capacity as an Invercargill City Councillor - fired a verbal shot at the parts of the Southland-Otago region who have decided not to unite as part of a regional protest.
Soper’s comments followed Invercargill Mayor Nobby Clark’s update to councillors from meetings he has had on the Dunedin Hospital matter.
Clark said they could not get a full “regional push” around the opposition to the Government’s recent rethink of Dunedin Hospital plans.
Queenstown and Dunstan - and to a lesser extent Gore - were not keen to take part, Clark said.
“They all have their own push for more services and they believe in Minister [Chris] Bishop’s comments where he said whatever we put into Dunedin we will have to take out of other hospitals.
“So that’s sort of divided the ranks a little bit,” Clark said.
Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop and Health Minister Shane Reti announced recently the cost of the project had escalated to an estimated $3 billion from an original estimate of between $1.2b-$1.4b in 2017.
The project is now being reviewed with the Government indicating they will not spend more than $1.88b.
Soper is a current Invercargill city councillor and former Labour MP in Parliament. She has held the role of deputy chair of the Health Select Committee and served on the Southern District Health Board.
Soper did not believe the $3b figure suggested by the Government was correct and the South needed to push back.
“The parts of the region who are deciding they won’t join in a protest are being absolute idiots,” Soper said.
“They are not going to gain anything for Dunstan or Queenstown out of not being part of a protest.
“Any money that the current Government cuts out of here is going to go to the North. The climate at the moment is not one where they are going to reinvest any of that money into Queenstown or Dunstan, or Gore for that matter.”
“I think they are being very foolish about losing the additional services of a major regional hospital with an attached well-respected medical school, and thinking they are going to gain anything from it because they won’t.”
Queenstown Lakes District Council Mayor Glyn Lewers has acknowledged the "frustration and angst" around the Dunedin Hospital project.
But he stated that he got the impression it was a very “Dunedin-centric view of the world” and that was one of the drawbacks of the hospital.
The Queenstown Mayor has told the ODT that “we’ve got fish to fry here as well, when it comes to providing closer-to-home healthcare”.
“Dunedin is going to get a hospital, there’s no two bones about it.
"[But] my focus, as mayor of this district, is actually improving the health outcomes here ... which means actually providing the services closer to home here, in the Queenstown Lakes and Central Otago."
When it was revealed last year that $90m was being proposed to be cut from the cost of the building of the new Dunedin Hospital, southern mayors united as part of a campaign to protest that.
At the time Gore mayor Ben Bell said he was against the cuts but felt the campaign was better fought by those in Dunedin.
“We have got our own issues to look after. When we all come together it distracted from the issues of Gore a little bit,” he told the ODT.
Soper has said she has had many people asking if a march would be held in Invercargill in protest.
Her belief was the time might have passed for that and if a march was arranged and few people turned up it might actually have a detrimental impact.
She urged people to sign the online petition being circulated as part of the They Save We Pay: Hospital Cuts Hurt campaign and send their messages to Government.
Mayor Clark has also requested advertising be taken out through What’s on Invers and Southland Express to promote the online petition.
On Tuesday the council also voted in favour of linking to the petition via the council’s own website.
The straight out lies from Luxon and Reti dont sit well with anything they promise for the south
As a teaching hospital and heli service the south relies on the great service available.Infrastructure is positive expenditure for generations and health care is priority .Budget health care is not an option it’s not what Jo public want .The money is their ,long term critical thinking from Bishop and Willis required and if they can’t do their job properly ..resign