Letters to the Editor: methane, floods and the hospital

Bipartisanship needed to get hospitals built

Everyone wants this hospital to be completed quickly and within budget. Accessible healthcare is essential for the health and wellbeing of all people.

However after seven years we see only one attractive partially completed building standing alone in what looks like an almost vacant area.

Before beginning any project, wise individuals always ensure that the site and plans match the needs of the future, the best people are put in charge and most especially that there will be sufficient funding to finish the job.

I remember completing several “They Save We Pay” cards when the Labour government was failing to show any progress with this hospital build. Surely six years were more than enough to get this project completed or well on the way?

Sadly this hospital has become a political football. In the future, New Zealand people need to know that thoroughly planned and budgeted-for major projects, once started, will continue without delays until completed.

I hope all MPs will support a bipartisan agreement so that this hospital and attached medical school will be completed quickly and become again a world-leading facility.

Bernice Armstrong

North East Valley

[Abridged — length. Editor.]

Past performance

I note the appropriate questioning of how a newspaper can on one hand provide objective and factual reporting on an issue such as the Dunedin hospital and then be a major component of organising public protest.

What concerns me most in this issue is just how the inactivity of the last six years has been reported on, or to be more correct, not reported on to the extent that it might have been.

It seems that previous PM Ardern’s announcements that the hospital plans were going to be drastically cut back have been largely forgotten or ignored, but far more importantly, that over that six years prior to 2024 very little happened.

The sad reality is that this has been the case for many necessary projects throughout the country.

Readers would do well to read Russell Lund’s contribution to this issue and also realise that this government has committed to expenditure of $1.88 billion. That is a lot of money and far more than was actually committed prior to 2024.

Russell Garbutt

Clyde

[Abridged, length. The Otago Daily Times reported extensively on proposed hospital cuts by the previous government. Editor.]

A note of caution

Coming at a time when real estate investment trusts (REIT) are the subject of US government moves to regulate private equity investment in healthcare, the early bid from Vital Healthcare Property Trust (ODT 4.10.24) for a slice of the stalled Dunedin hospital build, may need some scrutiny.

Over the last decade private equity funds assets have more than doubled, totalling $US82 trillion in 2023, prompting a number of bills before the Senate aiming to root-out corporate greed and private equity abuse in the healthcare system

How successful these bills will be is moot, but at least they sound a note of caution for the unwary.

Susan Hall

Oamaru

Coffee cart

It will be a great day when general practices get all the funding they need and Simeon Brown has to open a coffee cart to pay for pothole repairs.

Helen Davies, GP

Dunedin

Unplugged energy better applied to other things

Dunedin retailers are really suffering and fewer cruise ships are calling into our port. Still a few nuisances had time and money to complete a huge unwanted banner and display it in front of our magnificent railway station. Others had time to loiter around Port Chalmers streets.

Protesters are pests and need to be moved on.

Alex Armstrong

North East Valley

A meaty issue

I sympathise with Graham Hunter (Letters ODT 4.10.24). I enjoy eating good meat but the facts are: grazing and crop land used to produce meat utilises 80% of the world’s agricultural land yet accounts for only 20% of the protein supplied.

It is true methane is short-lived, and providing emissions do not increase there is very little warming. But over 20 years the warming is 80 times worse than CO₂, and NZ’s emissions have increased dramatically since we pledged to reduce them. Note also, methane accounts for about a third of the current warming. Perhaps with wild weather upon the globe, reducing methane might be a good idea?

NZ can’t do much about biogenic methane except reduce stock levels but the world could do something about “fugitive methane” — gas escaping from fossil fuel recovery. More relevant for New Zealand, we could do many things about CO₂ from transport.

Dennis Horne

Howick

Enough already

The coalition parties have now spent nearly 11 months in the Beehive, nearly one third of their parliamentary term. Surely it is time now for them to take responsibility for their actions, instead of blaming the last government for everything?

Hazel Agnew

Oamaru

Floods are an engineering issue to solve

I am somewhat disgusted with the article in today’s paper (ODT 10.10.24) relating to home insurance for South Dunedin residents, and particularly concerning Belinda Storey saying insurers were already considering walking away from some South Dunedin properties.

Her comments should be ignored, as a spokesman from the Insurance Council in the same article says the most common measure by insurers was premium loadings or increase excesses for particular hazards and that far less common is excluding a natural hazard or declining cover altogether.

Ms Storey refers to the 2015 flood, which was not caused by anything more than the failure to ensure the stormwater system was maintained and operated properly, as was done during the heavier rain in 1968.

The present stormwater system was upgraded in the 1960s with renewal of the reticulation pipes and the building of the Portobello Rd stormwater pumping station.

This work was done using the best knowledge we had at the time. It has coped well, when maintained, as has been proved recently. The present staff and contractors are to be congratulated for their efforts.

However global warming is a problem not to be ignored. I am a retired surveyor and I recently wrote a report suggesting some action.