The Dunedin Hospital is the only tertiary-level hospital for the Lower South Island. It is the nearest tertiary-level hospital for well over 300,000 people and has around 400 beds. The hospital is ancient and no longer fit for purpose, it was constructed with asbestos and it leaks all over. The hospital needs to be replaced. In 2018 the Labour government announced plans for a new hospital similar or greater in capacity than the current hospital. In 2022 Labour significantly cut the hospital project, they cut dozens of beds, hundreds of non-clinical spaces, and a considerable portion of the planned operating theatres and equipment. The National Party opposed these cuts and campaigned on reversing some of them. They were elected.
On the 26th of September 2024, government ministers came to Ōtepoti Dunedin and announced they were cutting the new Ōtepoti hospital project. They said they would either build a smaller, worse hospital than originally promised or scrap the new hospital project entirely and simply refurbish the old one. They claimed there wasn’t enough money to go around and other hospitals across the country also needed refurbishment. They would have us believe they had no choice in leaving over 300,000 people without a fit-for-purpose hospital. This is a lie.
Both National and Labour refuse to implement a capital gains tax or a wealth tax which would raise billions to support and upgrade our public health system. They refuse to do this because these taxes target the wealthiest New Zealanders, the capitalist class. The government is in power to serve the capitalist class, most government ministers are themselves capitalists, and it is the capitalists who bankroll the government’s election victories. So what do they do instead of taxing the rich and funding public healthcare? The coalition government gives 15 billion dollars to landlords and the wealthiest New Zealanders and they pay for it by sacking thousands of government workers, many of whom being healthcare workers, they abolished the Māori Health Authority, ended environmental initiatives, they cut the Dunedin hospital project, slashed infrastructure projects around the country and they took out loans. They actively choose to line the pockets of themselves and the ruling class at the expense of public health. They purposefully choose to starve the public healthcare system of funds. Why do they do this? They do it to set the stage for privatisation.
They want to sell off our public health infrastructure so that capitalists can move in and profit from the sickness and suffering of the New Zealand public. Government ministers themselves have publicly proposed this sickening course of action, most recently at the ACT Party’s “State of the Nation address” where associate health minister and ACT Party leader David Seymour said “New Zealanders need to get over squeamishness about privatisation” and “If something isn’t getting a return, it should be sold so we can afford to buy something that does”. As well as that, the government is presently refusing to rule out the sale of the new Dunedin outpatient building to fund the rest of the hospital build.
To lead the way in this campaign to destroy public healthcare is the newly appointed Minister of Health, Simeon Brown. One of the government’s most conservative MPs, Simeon Brown was the president of the University of Auckland’s anti-abortion club called “ProLife Auckland”. He has consistently and publicly stated that he believes abortion is tantamount to murder and that this vital aspect of healthcare should be a criminal offense. What are his qualifications to be Minister of Health? None! He has absolutely no experience in the health sector. Before politics, Brown worked as a banker. His appointment as Minister of Health is clearly for the purpose of forcing right-wing, capitalist ideology into our healthcare system, regardless of the human cost.
All of this together constitutes a massive attack on the working class. The working class relies on public healthcare. Unlike the rich, the capitalist class and those paid well to represent its interests, we cannot simply go private without risking financial ruin. When surgery waiting times skyrocket it is the workers who wait, it is workers who die waiting. When there aren’t enough beds available it will be the workers who lay sick in the hallways. When the government attacks public healthcare, it is the workers that they attack. If the government is allowed to continue down this path and privatises our public healthcare system it will be workers who will be forced to choose between rent and medical bills.
We don’t have to just lay down and take this, we can fight, we must fight. We can protest, we can rally, we can disrupt, occupy, even go on strike. These people, Christopher Luxon, Simeon Brown, Shane Reti, the whole lot of them, have blood on their hands and they shouldn’t be able to take a step outside without being reminded of that. Yet these actions won’t be enough, not by themselves: while the capitalist system of exploitation and profit dominates this country and beyond, public healthcare will always be at risk and under attack.
We have to build a revolutionary socialist movement capable of freeing the working class from the oppression and exploitation of capitalism, capable of building a society where human need is placed above the endless pursuit of profit. We must do this because if we don’t we are dooming ourselves and future generations to a dystopian future where the rich control our healthcare and can extort whatever price they like for it.
Image credit: Hospital Cuts Protest, Dunedin, New Zealand, Sat. 28 Sept. 2024 (CC BY 4.0 – Photo by Mark McGuire),
