Gordon Campbell: On The Dunedin Hospital Fiasco

The word “blow-out” is such a politically loaded term. Regardless, Finance Minister Nicola Willis was still insisting this morning that Dunedin’s promised new hospital project has gone “ off track” and that we all “need to be sensible.” So let's be sensible. Let's recognise that the increase in cost for Dunedin’s new hospital has been the absolutely normal, bog-standard cost escalation you would expect to see (a) seven years down the track from the original costings, and (b) after the government has added extra items onto the project shopping list, in order to exaggerate the size of its cost.