Editorial: Big problems and small thinking

Deputy Mayor Sophie Barker and Mayor Jules Radich protest cutbacks to the new Dunedin hospital design. Photo / Peter McIntosh, ODT

EDITORIAL

New Zealand’s approach to infrastructure might best be described as pothole thinking.

Where one nation might see craters as an opportunity for a new road, New Zealand is more likely to throw in a patch of hot mix that will last a few months.

A Government spokesperson recently responded to concerns about our potholed roads by pointing out more than 45,000 potholes were repaired across the 11,000km of New Zealand’s state highway network during the 2021/22 financial year and a further 2400km of state highway would due to be resealed or rebuilt by the close of this month.

This might be considered a success for those at their desks in Wellington but is less satisfactory for those negotiating the undulating highways.

It is not just roads, however. New Zealand seems beset with residue from the Number 8 wire culture where everything can be salvaged, mended and restored to barely working order.

Our hospitals have been made over in repeated attempts to bring them up to a trustworthy standard. In Budget 2022 the Government committed to a record $11.1 billion operating budget for Health New Zealand over the next four years, with another $1.3b in capital expenditure going towards refurbishing hospitals and other health infrastructure. Priority went to the redevelopment of Nelson, Whangārei and Hillmorton hospitals.

That’s to be lauded, particularly for those communities but where is the view for the long term?

Even when a bigger picture is considered, it is inevitably reduced during delivery. A new $1.5b hospital for Dunedin was green-lit in 2018 but has been beset by delays and budget blowouts, with health authorities now trying to find cost-savings. That means beds, operating theatres, and labs have been cut from the design.

Yet, clinical neurophysiologist Richard Frith describes an entire health service being turned upside down, driven by the philosophical views of some of those in charge, rather than the practical provision of good healthcare. He has pointed out nine straightforward solutions to our health system, many of them focused on a more central view of all of New Zealand’s needs.

Short-term thinking leads regional health services to poach staff from each other in a perverse game of robbing Peter to deprive Paul and leaving New Zealand with a patchwork of postcode healthcare.

Meanwhile, our built environment is under increasing pressure from extreme weather events. As emeritus professor Dr John McClure points out today, earthquakes have probably never killed anyone in New Zealand but our failure to construct tremor-resistant structures certainly has.

Perhaps the electoral cycle is partly to blame. A government has three years with the Treasury keys to demonstrate how it will remediate decades of three-year cycles of flip-flopping policies and quick fixes. The keys are then thrown to a new administration like a game of beach cricket where everyone gets a go and no one keeps score.

Without a singular, unified vision of what the country needs for a better future, we’re fated to continue juddering along this cobbled-together road.