Christopher Luxon’s Dunedin visit puts his ‘Kick-Arse’ Hospital promise under the spotlight

Video: thisquality Editor Samuel Hudson was invited inside the new Dunedin Hospital Outpatient Building. Take an exclusive look inside the facility in this guided tour video. (Supplied / Samuel Hudson / Quiet Pact Network)

OPINION: Prime Minister Christopher Luxon came to Dunedin, appearing at the Otago Daily Times Class Act event and speaking to Rotary at the Glenroy Auditorium. There was one place conspicuously absent from public reporting around his visit, the new Dunedin Hospital Outpatient Building.

Luxon has repeatedly attached himself to this project. In October 2024, while in Dunedin, he told a student wearing a hospital campaign pin: “Don’t you worry, we are going to build you a kick-arse hospital”.

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Nearly two years later, part of that hospital is now standing, open and real. I got an exclusive tour inside of the Outpatient Building, on all levels. My editorial video is attached to this article.

The $440 million, five-storey Outpatient Building was officially opened in August by Health Minister Simeon Brown and is preparing to take patients. Structural steel is also rising on the larger Inpatient Building.

I recently walked through the new Outpatient Building myself. In my editorial tour inside the facility, I documented the modern imaging equipment, digital check-in systems, patient-focused design and the scale of what Dunedin residents and the wider Great South waited years to see delivered.

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I expressed the frustration surrounding the project cost, delay and the unfinished Inpatient Building. That is exactly why Luxon’s Dunedin visit raises concerns.

If the Prime Minister was prepared to use the hospital as a symbol of ambition when the project was politically difficult, why was there no publicly reported visit to the site now that there is a completed building to see?

Brown opened the Outpatient Building, the Inpatient Building contract has been signed, and the Government says $1.88 billion has been committed to the programme.

Those are relevant facts. So is Luxon’s earlier rhetoric.

Image: Prime Minister Christopher Luxon speaking at a Rotary event at Dunedin’s Glenroy Auditorium during his visit to the city, which drew scrutiny after no publicly reported stop at the new Dunedin Hospital Outpatient Building.

A Prime Minister who once told Dunedin not to worry and promised a “kick-arse” hospital was back in the city while one of the project’s biggest milestones sat only minutes away from the political and civic events he attended.

We have lived through redesigns, protests, funding arguments and years of uncertainty around this project. The new Outpatient Building is a physical result taxpayers can walk into and judge for themselves.

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For a city promised visibility and delivery, that absence is worth noting.

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