Ryall Tony: General Debate 
Ryall Tony: General Debate 
[Volume:638;Page:8193] 
Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay of Plenty) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. Is it not incredible that we can have the unprecedented step of the High Court striking down a health contract of almost half a billion dollars and this Government says no one is accountable? It says no one is accountable. 
We have seen the remarkable performance of the Minister of Health Pete Hodgson who started his answer today by saying he did not want politicians involved in contracts. Then when we have this very case where a health board politician is involved in a contract he is prepared to defend that and he is prepared to defend the appalling performance of his hand-picked district health board flunkeys in Auckland who are part of this appalling situation. In their eagerness to do the deal they have broken their own rules and the Minister stands up in this House and his attitude is that the district health boards are right and the judge is wrong. 
In respect of the performance of the hand-picked district health board chairman and deputy chairman in Auckland a judge said very clearly that they broke all the rules when it came to dealing with the conflict of interest of Dr Bierre in this laboratory contract. They are the people who approved a half-billion-dollar contract to a man who was a member of the board that resolved to let out the contracts a man who the High Court said was intimately involved in setting the rules for the contract and a man who only weeks before the tender documents went out—when there were discussions about the tender—was personally invited to a meeting with these hand-picked Government appointees to advise them on how this whole process should be run. 
Those people have missed the opportunity time and time again to deal with the conflict of interest of Dr Bierre so much so that the High Court has made it clear that the Auckland district health boards should have dismissed any deal involving Dr Bierre—that is what the High Court said. The High Court said there is no principled way that a contract or an offer should have been accepted from a deal that involved a member of the board who had intimate involvement in setting up the terms of putting this deal out to contract who was involved with the discussions of putting this deal out to contract and who was briefing health bosses only weeks before the contract documents went out. There was no way that that sort of person should have been allowed to participate in a health contract but this Government says there is. This Government says that because no one is being held accountable. 
 Over the next few weeks in question time in this House we will go through each of the points where the High Court has pointed the finger at Wayne Brown Ross Keenan and the rest of the Government’s hand-appointed flunkeys in Auckland who are participants in this appalling decision. The High Court has made it absolutely clear that in no way should a contract have been given to a district health board member who was so heavily involved in setting the terms and conditions of this contract. Even the High Court has noticed that Dr Bierre had intimate experience with the key decision makers of the regional district health boards. He knew what their thinking was he knew what they wanted and he had been intimately involved in the development of the district health boards’ plans. I cannot envisage that such a deal would be accepted in the commercial world. Yet with public money our representatives the people who are supposed to represent the taxpayers on this district health board have been involved in a deal that the High Court has said is unlawful. 
I urge members to read the decision. The judge said that Wayne Brown should have checked with Dr Bierre that he had abandoned his attempts that Wayne Brown should have been aware of these conflicts and was advised to address them—but there was no action on that front—and that the district health boards should have dismissed any bid involving Dr Bierre. But they simply did not do that. That is appalling. That is simply appalling.