THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES THURSDAY, May 5, 1938. HOSPITAL BOARD POLICY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23492, 5 May 1938, Page 10

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES THURSDAY, May 5, 1938. HOSPITAL BOARD POLICY

It is a consequence of the Labour Party's approach to its goal of political dominance, in local as well as in national affairs, that the Hospital Board election is being fought on lines as strictly partisan as those which divide the grouped candidates for seats on the City Council. That attitude toward the administration of an institution so intimately concerned with the health of the people as a whole is utterly indefensible. A hospital board, as Dr Newlands laid down in the course of his very pointed address on Tuesday evening, is emphatically no place where party politics should enter. The special problems associated with hospital management should demand the best choice that the electors are able to make irrespective of the political opinions of the candidates offering. The attitude of the Labour Party, however, compels citizens to consider the problem of selection that will confront them on election day on definite lines of party. It is of interest, therefore, to examine some of the alleged " policy " utterances on which Labour candidates for office on the board are resting their claims for consideration. Much is being made by them of the need for extensions and improvements to existing accommodation at the hospital itself and at the Talboys Home at Caversham. Labour speakers appear to advance these very proper causes as planks of a platform to which non-Labour candidates need not be expected to subscribe. Dr Newlands has, with characteristic thoroughness, exposed the absurdity —one might say the impertinence—of that attitude. Actually it should not be necessary to repeat what Dr Newlands took the trouble to emphasise—that the Dunedin Hospital is one of the best equipped in the Dominion, " recent statements to the contrary notwithstanding." He referred to the newly-acquired administration block and to additions, either in progress or in prospect, to the X-ray and radium departments. The new maternity hospital, he said, was probably the best in the southern hemisphere. Looking ahead, Dr Newlands added that land was being secured and plans were in preparation for a new outpatients' and massage block and that extensive additions to the Nurses' Home were being provided for, and after that the next step would, he said, be to increase the accommodation in the hospital itself by up to 100 beds. It was not an overstatement, in his judgment, to say that the planned additions to the hospital would involve a capital expenditure of £250,000 within the next five years.

But that is not all. Not even the Caversham home is left to the Labour critics of the board's administrative outlook, for Dr Newlands has repeated, with effective emphasis, what ought to be common knowledge—that the board is in complete agreement with those who declare that the home is no longer fit for the purpose to which it is put. Proposals had been made to the Government to take over the area, added Dr Newlands, it being part of the board's programme to build a modern institution at Wakari. It remained for Dr Newlands to answer one other point of irresponsible and ill-informed criticism of the board's administrative methods. He referred to the fact that the board had recently been branded the " hardest-hearted " body in the Dominion, The Labour can-

didate who made that wholly unwarranted comment added, on the subject of indoor relief, that on the care of the indigent in their own homes last year the board had spent no more than £l. As chairman of the board's Benevolent Committee Dr Newlands was in a position to speak authoritatively on the extent of the charitable disbursements approved by it, nor did he neglect to refer, in pungent terms, to the toofrequent occurrence of acts of " brazen imposition " which his committee had to suffer, committed by people who, " when unmasked, usually resort to some member of the board whom they have discovered to be ready to utilise any weapon, however unworthy, in order to discredit the board as at present constituted." In respect of the extent of indoor and outdoor relief, there is fortunately no need to rely, for refutation of absurd charges, on the testimony of board members. The statistics supplied as an appendix to the report of the Department of Health show that last year the board dispensed relief in 662 cases, affecting 1359 persons. Of those cases 208 are classified under the heading of indoor relief. It can be left to the electors to judge whether the princely sum of £1 would be a reasonable estimate of the expense incurred by the board under that heading!