O'Connor Simon: Urgent Debates — Health Ministry—Financial Management of Building ProjectText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Connor Simon: Urgent Debates — Health Ministry—Financial Management of Building Project[Sitting date: 08 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9447. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I am always pleased to speak on issues like this particularly after the likes of Grant Robertson because I hope I inject a bit of rationality and calm into things. You can often note around topics like this—and it is something I have talked about in the House before—that it is about proportionality. When we respond to issues you can choose to yell scream be quite shrill about things—Tim Macindoe: Calm.SIMON O’CONNOR: Yes you can try to be much more calm about these things but if you measure a topic against a level of shrillness I think you begin to understand very quickly—sorry Mr Assistant Speaker; the House can begin to understand—the level of truth. And the long and the short is that we have heard a lot of shrill comments we have heard a lot of conspiracy we have heard a lot of personal attacks and I think again that masks basically a lack of substance.But I do echo at the start what the Minister of Health himself said at the beginning—I am not sure whether he was heard because there were so many interjections from the other side but what he said was that a mistake has happened OK? I am more than happy to say that other members on this side of the House are happy to say that the Director-General of Health Mr Chai Chuah has said that—a mistake has happened. Whether you then take a particular mistake to be a sign of a collapsing health system—I think that is out of proportion. I think if you start to use shrill language saying that this is a Government that is arrogant and out of touch—again shrill. Interestingly of course it has been the thematic approach of the Opposition for a while now.I think it is important to put this into some context. The first for me if there is a theme is that the exception proves the rule—the exception proves the rule. This is exceptional it is a mistake it is one that should not have happened one we did not want to happen and do not want to happen again but it actually shows and proves just how well the health sector overall is performing. Look mistakes do happen. The Opposition knows this—it elected Phil Goff and then got rid of him and then made the mistake of putting in Shearer and got rid of him and then followed through into Cunliffe and now I think they are probably still regretting mistakes there. The thing here is that ultimately mistakes do happen. You learn from those and you move on and that is exactly what has occurred here. Eighteen million dollars has not been apportioned correctly. It is a financial governance situation as much really as accounting and where things are placed and put.And really importantly—and I think it has been drawn to the attention of the House by other speakers—this is within the departmental spend not the operating spend so I think most Kiwis out there will understand that we have to have moneys to run the department and there are other New Zealanders out there who understand that we have moneys to run the actual health system the district health board itself. What we are talking about here is a Ministry of Health that thought: “Hey we will be able to fund the costs of refitting the building through savings in our departmental fund.” It thought it could save $24 million; it turned out it was not able to save as much as that. It forecasted incorrectly and instead it needed a further $18 million. A mistake has happened the Minister was rightly informed in time and was importantly informed as a Minister ought to be.But importantly as an operational matter the Director-General of Health as I understand things moved very quickly particularly to bring in the likes of PricewaterhouseCoopers PwC to look through not only how this particular situation happened but also to see what financial considerations can be put in place to make sure it does not happen again. I think that is fundamentally important.Context as well is fairly important. The whole idea of a refit for Government buildings is something that we have been looking at as a Government for quite some time. We are very aware that the likes of the Ministry of Education the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment the Ministry of Health—obviously in this particular circumstance—and the Ministry of Social Development are relooking at where they operate from how much floor space they need and so on. As context to the fact that the Ministry of Health was trying to refit which has brought about this $18 million shortfall is that ultimately the Government was seeking to save around I think $338 million in expenses related to buildings to actually reduce the cost by about 30 percent. I think it is really important to put therefore the $18 million that we are debating here today in the context of that wider $338 million savings.Again it is all around proportionality and some of the shrill nature of the debate is that we do not want to in a sense lose the forest for the trees. This has been a project by the Ministry of Health and others to save a substantial amount of money and yes elements of financial governance have led us to this situation—not ideal—but the systems have been put in place I have been assured as have others to make sure this does not happen again.It has been raised that it is a cover-up and that the Health Committee should have been told. Well look select committees are actually the masters in many ways of their own destiny. There are nine members of the committee independently minded and I would say capable who are able to read and to seek information and to ask questions. It was not something that was raised—it was not raised and has not been discussed. Personally I see no great conspiracy in that. When I think about the hour that we had with the Ministry of Health—sure I know in my own self there was a whole pile of questions that I would have liked to ask. The great thing about our parliamentary system particularly around annual reviews and estimates later in the year is that select committees get their opportunity to raise questions and to interrogate for want of a better word the Minister—Hon Member: Scrutinise.SIMON O’CONNOR: Scrutinise—there is a much much better word; interrogate is a bit too strong—not only the work of departments but also their officials. I have every confidence after the debate today of what some of the first questions will be in upcoming annual reviews. Again I do not think there is any conspiracy here—in fact you could ask why it took the Opposition so long to find these bits of information. The select committee—Sue Moroney: Because it was a cover-up.SIMON O’CONNOR: Here we go once again a yell about a cover-up that actually was down on paper. In fact if it was covered up we would not be having this discussion—[Interruption] Exactly. It seems a very strange statement.We are sitting within a health system as I said at the start that is incredibly positive. I think the joy or the attempted joy of the Opposition to jump on to this is as I said at the start a case of the exception proving the rule. The Opposition is not able by and large to find negative elements in our health system so a financial reporting error has become a moment of delight. I think what we have heard from Minister Coleman certainly what we have heard too from Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga one of the Associate Ministers is that this is well-structured and under control. I think that the public needs to have confidence that this has been discovered it has been appropriately reported—and I think the independent approach by bringing the likes of PricewaterhouseCoopers in is incredibly helpful itself.As I say too I know it is belabouring the point but I think it is fundamentally important in the context of others who keep saying “Hey we could have been funding more support for rheumatic fever” which in fact we have done remarkably well in already. Some people say we need more funding for cold houses. Yes there are always calls for more and of course this Government has done—I think it is hundreds of thousands; 300000 or more I think mainly State houses—an amazing job there. So there are two points: one the Government has been doing a tremendous amount of work in all the areas of health that have been put forward—great stories to tell there.But fundamentally there are always calls for more in the health system. Those of us who have worked in it understand that; those of us on the select committee understand that but importantly what we are talking about today is a departmental spend not the operational spend. Fundamentally not one dollar—not one cent—has been taken away from or is missing from the health budget which leads to the tens of thousands more surgeries under this Government to the really strong initiatives to reduce rheumatic fever to the moneys that have been put in to actually insulate homes around the country. Not one cent has been missing from that. We are talking in this context about a departmental budget a mistake that has been acknowledged and importantly a mistake that has been corrected—acknowledged corrected and processes put in place. There is not much more to be said in this proportionate speech.The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.