Niueans snub PM over new hospital

Prime Minister Helen Clark got a standing ovation in November when she declared that New Zealand would pay for a new hospital for Niue, devastated by a cyclone a year ago.

But Niueans are proving less keen to see the $6 million facility named after her.

When Helen Clark announced the funding of the hospital during a visit to the island she was cheered and applauded by hundreds of locals.

According to a Niue news website, Premier Young Vivian subsequently "talked for weeks" about naming the urgently needed medical facility the Helen Clark Hospital.

But the same website, which puts out fortnightly updates of news from Niue, has since reported that choice to be the least favoured in a poll it ran.

Asked what name they favoured, Niueans were overwhelmingly behind the Niue National Medical Centre, which got 60 per cent support.

Next most popular were the Heta Memorial Hospital or the Lord Liverpool Hospital, which each got 14 per cent approval.

The suggestion of Kaimiti Hospital, where the new facility will be located inland away from the cyclone-whipped seas which destroyed the former Lord Liverpool Hospital, was favoured by 9 per cent of those polled.

The Helen Clark Hospital attracted just 4.5 per cent support.

Niueans may have recalled that New Zealand had refused the request of the Niue Government to donate enough money so a new hospital could be built at the safer Kaimiti site after Cyclone Ofa in 1990.

Instead the old hospital was renovated on its clifftop site at Alofi, at a cost of $2.7 million.

The New Zealand Government at the time provided $800,000.

A spokeswoman for Helen Clark said the Prime Minister believed it was up to Niue to decide what it called the hospital.

"This is the first Helen Clark has heard of the debate and she would prefer her name not even to be discussed."