Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. Could I begin by wishing the member for Taieri all the best for solving the ambulance issue in South Otago and I trust that she will join me in keeping the Government's feet to the flames on the issue that I want to talk about. Four years ago next month the previous Government approved the indicative business plan for the complete rebuild of Dunedin Hospital. The options included renovating what was already there; we decided not do that the best thing to do was to completely rebuild it. Our preference was for it to be in the centre of the city and near the University of Otago. I have to say that that decision was made under some pretty fierce pressure from locals led by Labour Party members like David Benson-Pope and the local MPs David Clark and Clare Curran. Now David Clark petitioned this House to get the previous Government to commence Dunedin Hospital by the time of the 2017 general election. I'm paraphrasing but I recall Ms Leary's predecessor Clare Curran saying Well you know what? We have built quite a few hospitals in New Zealand. We know what we're doing. We should just get on with it." Well four years later the detailed business case still has not been approved by Cabinet. Four long years and the good people of the South are still waiting to know when their hospital build is going to commence.Six weeks before the last election in 2020 Cabinet did an extraordinary thing. It approved the detailed business case for Dunedin Hospital in principle. Now as far as I can tell that is unprecedented because a detailed business case in principle is called an indicative business case and that had been approved four years earlier—three and a half years earlier at that point. I'm pretty sure that announcement was a way of inoculating the people of the South keeping them quiet during the election campaign and giving the impression that more progress was being made on Dunedin Hospital than what was actually being made. My sources are telling me that there is a huge battle going on in the background between Treasury the Ministry of Health and probably Cabinet on the scope size and cost of the rebuild of Dunedin Hospital. We had public meetings about 18 months ago where the partnership chair for the rebuild the Hon Pete Hodgson talked about the number of beds in the hospital being more than we currently had but not as much as what would be required if we simply extrapolated our population growth and ageing.Well I received some information from the Minister of Health yesterday which talks about the proposed number of beds for the complete rebuild and it makes for startling reading. Now firstly there are more intensive care and emergency department beds and that will remove a bottleneck at the entry to the system but the bottle itself isn't getting bigger. There are very few extra beds from what we currently have. And I know from experience that what we currently have is fewer than what we used to have. And in respect of the children's ward the paediatric ward it is going to be smaller not bigger. None of this has been revealed to the people of the South and I think they need to know that the hospital build is not going to be materially larger than what we need and we already have significant capacity constraints in servicing the needs of the people from the Waitaki south.Frankly I would have thought that in the face of that the local MPs would have been banging on the door of the Minister of Health. Well I now know thanks to what Mr Little has told me that Dr Clark Ingrid Leary Rachel Brooking and Invercargill-based MP Liz Craig have not made a single approach to Andrew Little since he became Minister of Health.Hon Member: Not one.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Not one. No meetings no emails no letters and no correspondence into the Minister's office about this very important issue. Now the Minister himself did spend a day on 11 December—Ingrid Leary: Point of order Mr Speaker. I have made submissions on the Dunedin Hospital; verbal submissions to the Minister of Health.SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume her seat. That is not quite a point of order. I know the member is a new member but that is the sort of thing which could possibly be taken up in the debate or by way of a personal explanation. She has I think effectively done that albeit in an inappropriate way.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Thank you Mr Speaker. I look forward to Ingrid Leary and her Labour Party colleagues joining me in keeping this Government's feet to the flames and finding out when how big and how much Dunedin Hospital is going to be rebuilt by. Because I know that if this had been a National Government that had dragged the chain for three and a half years the good people of the South would be being led by those Labour MPs into marching in the streets. That is exactly what they should be doing now and making sure that the Government does the right thing."