Robertson Grant: Urgent Debates — Health Ministry—Financial Management of Building ProjectText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Urgent Debates — Health Ministry—Financial Management of Building Project[Sitting date: 08 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9446. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): Let us be absolutely clear about what has happened here because Ministers who have stood up have tried to say: “Oh well this was a very good deal. We need to have people in these facilities. It’ll bring staff together. It’ll have efficiencies.” That is not the debate. The debate is that the Ministry of Health with the Minister of Health along with a Minister of Finance looking the other way has come forward only when it was forced to to acknowledge that it did not have the $24 million that was required for this. And then when it was found out about that it tried to cover it up. That is what we are talking about here today—a ministry that somehow or other got past Treasury $24 million of spending of money that it did not have. And Treasury has been very clear in the papers that have come out that had it been consulted when this idea first went up it would not have approved it.On this side of the House we find it extremely hard to believe that Treasury was not consulted about an expenditure project of this scale and we will be digging in further to that. But if we accept that then this is not just a little financial mistake as the Minister of Health would have you believe; this is serious financial mismanagement and it is a cover-up. And New Zealanders deserve far far better than that. My colleagues Andrew Little and Annette King have outlined the details of this case.What I want to say to this House and to the people of New Zealand is that it is quite clear in the third term of this Government that it has got arrogant; it has got out of touch. It somehow does not think that $24 million matters. It somehow wants to brush off $24 million wasted—$18 million now has to be found—but $24 million does not seem like a big sum of money. Spending $26 million on a flag referendum does not seem like a big sum of money to this Government. The $10 million owed to KiwiSaver policyholders because they have not had their contributions passed on is brushed off by this Government.This case here is typical of an out-of-touch Government in its third term. It does not care any more whether it wastes $24 million. Well on this side of the House we know what $24 million could do in the health system. We know that it could deal with the operations for people who come into our office every day in pain because they are not getting operations under this Government. We know that that money could go into helping ensure that young people are not growing up in cold damp homes which are giving them respiratory illnesses and skin diseases which are seeing children show up at hospitals in greater numbers than ever before. That is what $24 million could give the health system. But instead this Government wants to cover up the fact that it has wasted that $24 million—now $18 million—which will have to be found year in year out in budgets.This case is one where the Government needs to own up and take responsibility. Where was the apology from Jonathan Coleman today? Where was the apology from Jonathan Coleman about how he and his ministry tried to hide the fact they did not have the money for this project—$24 million? They tried to hide it. They came back to Treasury asking for $18 million and then someone in Treasury asked the right questions and then it came to light. But it came to light this week only because of the good work of Annette King and the research unit of the Labour Party. No one on that side of the House was putting their hand up to say: “We had serious financial mismanagement.” Those are the words of the Secretary to the Treasury—serious financial mismanagement.It was a year ago that this was discovered—a year ago. Not one peep from the Government in the last year. It hid it it covered it up it did not want New Zealanders to know and it has only emerged because the Labour Party has brought it to the attention of New Zealanders. Well I will tell you this: we will keep doing that in the health sector because this Government is mismanaging the finances of New Zealand. It has got its eye off the ball when it comes to Bill English and Treasury and we have got a Ministry of Health that wants to cover things up. New Zealanders deserve far far better than that.