Dear John,

I've just come from the official opening of the new Lower Hutt After Hours facility with Health Minister Simeon Brown. In this year's Budget, the government put more money into urgent care, and this has allowed the After Hours to expand its offering. Until now the Hutt has been the only metropolitan area without daytime urgent care. That's now changing - from late this year, it'll open at 8am every day (currently, its hours are limited to 5.30-10pm, Monday to Friday, and 8-10pm on weekends and public holidays). The After Hours has also moved to the old birthing centre site - which means it can have 10 consultant rooms (not three and a bit), and much better facilities. All in all it's great news for the Hutt!

Also good news is the upgraded Boulcott Hospital facility, which Simeon and I officially opened last night as well. Boulcott has been in the Hutt since 1984 and was started by a group of local surgeons. With this new upgrade theatre, capacity has gone from three to five and it has capacity for 4,500 procedures a year. Ultimately the upgrade means more surgeries, shorter wait times, and better care for patients. Boulcott supports Health New Zealand to deliver publicly funded elective surgeries, and this expansion supports our plan to reduce waitlists and deliver timely, quality healthcare through our Elective Boost.

And of course this comes on top of construction starting on the new Acute Mental Health facility (with a generous donation from Sir Mark Dunajtschik) a couple of months ago. Lots of exciting things happening in the Hutt... and watch this space for the Melling/RiverLink sod-turning, too!

It's been a busy couple of weeks at Parliament in my Ministerial portfolios. I'm really pleased we are making progress on the vexed issue of road cones. Unbelievably, $778 million was spent on temporary traffic management and road cones between 2020 and 2023 - that's two thirds of the cost of Transmission Gully! Road cone usage has been totally out of control, and it was all driven by a 567 page "Code" that used to be used for temporary traffic management and road cones in NZ. It used to specify down to the nearest centimetre where a cone needed to be placed.

We’ve replaced this with a far smaller pragmatic guide that basically prioritises common sense and forces people to use a risk based approach, rather than a compliance heavy approach. NZTA has seen good results on the state highway network with costs basically halving (I'd like that to improve even further) and now we're rolling that out to local roads (which are controlled by councils) as well. If they don't adopt the guide to traffic management, then no NZTA funding will be available to them.

The government is taking action on a range or fronts to reduce red tape, improve growth and reduce the cost of living. Last week for example, Chris Penk announced that thousands of additional building products including plasterboard, cladding systems, external doors, and windows will all be easier to use in construction sites across New Zealand. There are thousands of well-made, high performing products that have been tested against rigorous international standards but have faced barriers for uptake here, purely because they have not been specifically tested against our own standards. Now it will be much easier to use plasterboard, for example, manufactured in New Zealand, Australia, UK, Europe and the United States.

Out and About: It's been a busy couple of weeks at Parliament but it's been good to be out and about in the Hutt too. I enjoyed meeting the St Oran's College Year 12/13 Business studies students last Friday - they all pitched their Young Enterprise products to me - and they were so impressive! Well done to all.

Finally, a big congrats to Hutt Old Boys' Marist who won the Jubilee Cup for premier club rugby a couple of weekends ago. It was HOBM's first win since 2014! I really enjoyed the game out at Kilbirnie Park - and even did some impromptu sideline radio commentary as well.

Have a great rest of the week.

Chris
New Hutt After Hours
The new Hutt After Hours is a huge upgrade on the old High St site. Fantastic.
Boulcott Hospital Upgrade
With Graeme Dyer and Sue Suckling (Board Chair) at the opening of the upgraded Boulcott Hospital. We are very lucky to have such a wonderful facility in the Hutt, right next to Hutt Hospital.
Cracking down on road cones
Holding up the massive monster that is the "Code of Practice" for temporary traffic management in Parliament. We've ditched this!
St Oran's Young Enterprise

It was awesome meeting the St Oran's College Young Enterprise teams a couple of Fridays ago. Some brilliant products and extremely well pitched! Well done. Thank you for hosting me.
Congrats Hutt Old Boys' Marist!

A great win!
Collecting for Women's Refuge

Thank you to everyone who donated generously when I was collecting for Women's Refuge Hutt Valley last week.
Seriously?
Visit to Petone to Ngauranga Shared Path

The Ngauranga to Petone shared path, which I've advocated for since 2014, is due to be completed next year. I dropped in for a look at the progress NZTA and Downer are making, and it's pretty impressive stuff.

So far 6,005 out of 6,700 concrete blocks have been installed, 2,858 of 2,899 vertical seawall blocks are in place, and 156 out of 336 concrete covered screens have been completed.

While it's going to be great to have a safer, nicer path for cyclists, walkers, runners and more (the current path sandwiched between state highway and rail line isn't great), this is first and foremost a resilience project. It will make the rail line and State Highway much more able to withstand weather events.
A win for vintage car owners

From the 1st of September WOFs for vintage vehicles and COFs for private motorhomes will become yearly instead of six-monthly 🚙 . You can see me signing it here. ([link removed])
Riverstone Terraces Upgrade

The Riverstone Terraces intersection is a dangerous one and NZTA will soon be installing traffic lights on it.

Lights will only be triggered for northbound traffic to stop when there is a vehicle waiting to turn right out of or into Moonshine Hill Road. The lights aren’t on a cycle. It’s demand driven.

The new lights will not impact southbound SH2 traffic passing the intersection or northbound traffic turning left onto Moonshine Hill Road.

For the record - not me
Did have to laugh at this story that popped up last week.... for the record, it wasn't me!
#LovetheHutt

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