King Annette: New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Southern DHB) Elections Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKing Annette: New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Southern DHB) Elections Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 12 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:11096. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): Can I just say to the member who has resumed his seat Todd Barclay that less than 6 months ago David Clark and I did a tour of his electorate and I think probably crossed into some other electorates as well. We started in Timaru and then went to Ōāmaru Maniototo Queenstown Dunstan and Balclutha. We visited all the small hospitals there. They had not seen the member—[Interruption]The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! That member will sit down. The member will stand withdraw and apologise.Todd Barclay: I withdraw and apologise.Hon ANNETTE KING: —and they had not seen the commissioners at that stage. We beat them on the tour of those small rural hospitals. I can tell that member that we have a very very good understanding of what is happening in rural New Zealand. I have to say what a very erudite speech we got from David Parker setting out the background to the problem of that amalgamated board of the Southern District Health Board. It was a decision made by a foolhardy petty highly political former Minister of Health who did not look at the costings or the savings or the service delivery.The big loser in that amalgamation I have to say was Invercargill because of the rural adjuster that should have been put in there as noted by David Parker who set it out very well and understands it—which I see quite a lot of members opposite do not. In fact I do not know why the member who resumed his seat did not speak about how disappointed he was that the rural adjuster for his area has not been changed. I do not know whether David Parker knows but the Ministry of Health has now done a review of the population-based funding formula. It was delayed because of the Christchurch earthquake and it does the review only after each census. So because of the earthquake there was no census so it did not do the population-based funding formula review. It has now been done.Has it changed things for the Southern District Health Board? No it has not. It is a very disappointing review indeed. I think the commissioners who have been put in there to fix the problem are really going to struggle. One of the good reasons why there is not an election for this district health board is that the accountability for what it comes up with sheets straight back to the Minister of Health—straight back to the Minister of Health for the accountability of what it comes up with.I just have to say that we have supported this bill. We have supported it because we understand that this district health board is in serious trouble and has been from 2009 when a Crown monitor was put in and when it went into intensive monitoring. I understand that very well because district health boards that have to have Crown monitors and intensive monitoring are in serious trouble. The board could not balance its budget. It was running a deficit—a big deficit; it was up to about $42 million. Joe Butterfield was the chair and Joe chaired the South Canterbury District Health Board right through the years that I was Minister of Health. He is a good man. He could not balance the budget. He could not in the end hold together the attitude and the feelings of the people of the South about what was happening to their health services.We did call for a commissioner much earlier. Maybe if the Minister had listened to what we were saying the board would not have had to delay this election because the commissioner would have had the time to work on whatever they were going to put in place to fix this problem in the Southern District Health Board. But he dithered and he dallied around and finally he put in a commissioner.That commissioner has been there for less than a year. It will be a year in June—next month. That is insufficient time for the commissioner accompanied now by three other commissioners to come up with an implementation plan to be able to fix the problems in the Southern District Health Board. So reluctantly we have to give it time to do that. I did put up in the Committee stage of this bill a Supplementary Order Paper and I thank New Zealand First and the Greens for supporting it. It was a sensible Supplementary Order Paper. It suggested that we postpone the election rather than cancel the election until 2019. We proposed to postpone the election of the district health board until the plan was implemented—which could be within a year it could be within 18 months. It could have by Order in Council had an election. It would not have cost any more because if you are delaying an election you have not spent the money and if you have it you would spend it. When it gets to the next election of course you spend for that election. The Minister was very charitable and smiled nicely but did nothing towards looking at it seriously.I pick up the points made by New Zealand First and the Greens. They opposed the bill at the first reading. We worked hard on it in the Health Committee—and I think perhaps there was some misunderstanding as to what came out of those deliberations because none of us opposed it at the select committee. But they have stayed with what they believed in. We have too—tried to amend it we have tried to make it better—but at the end of the day we do have to support it because we cannot leave the people of the southern part of New Zealand with health services that are not working and with plans that are not in place and then just put in elected members so that the Minister of Health can blame them. That is what it got into with the Southern District Health Board: a blame game.So these commissioners now have got a big lot of work to do. At the select committee we asked for greater transparency from the commissioners. We said that they have got to be much more open. Part of the problem for the Southern District Health Board is that it got more and more entrenched in its problems. It closed shop. It did not want people to see how bad it was. It is what happens when there are big issues. So we have said: “You cannot continue with that approach. You’ve got to be more open. Involve the public—they will understand and they will help you.” We at the select committee said that there ought to be more openness transparency and involvement of the public. Within days of us saying that at the select committee—and I have to say it came from the Opposition benches—the commissioners then announced that there would be more openness and transparency. Actually if they had read the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act they would have known: even though they were commissioners they were required to have the statutory committees. They have then decided that they will have the statutory committees and open them up to the public. So I welcome that. But we are going to keep a very close eye on the transparency and openness and involvement of the public as the commissioners make their deliberations and they put forward their plan and implement that plan.So we just put them on notice that that is what we will be doing because we do feel that the right of people to have an election for their district health board is a really important one. We also understand that sometimes you have to do things that do not allow you to have an election at that time. But we are suspicious of this Government which is why we were trying to put in safeguards. I look at the Minister Louise Upston looking at me quizzically—the reason why Minister is that a promise was made to the people of Canterbury that they would have an election for Environment Canterbury. A promise—made by a Minister—written down said orally said on the television. And what happened? It postponed the election. It postponed it again and so trust in the Government’s word on whether elections would be held is very very low indeed.I can assure the people of the Southern District Health Board that when we lead a Government come 2017 we will be putting back in place a governance board; we will be ensuring those locals will be back again until they can have an election and they will certainly be having an election under a Labour-led Government. We brought back the democracy into district health boards. It was the National Party that got rid of elected area health boards and replaced them with a whole lot of outfits that had funny names: CHEs—big CHEs weak CHEs round CHEs; it had HFAs and RHAs you name it—acronyms for Africa. But it took away the right of locals to have a say on their health services. One of the first things that Labour did as a new Government the fifth Labour Government—we brought back elected district health boards. Seven members elected four appointed and that has been in place to this day. The people of the Southern District Health Board deserve to have that back and I can promise you that they will get it back.