Roy Heather: Urgent Debates — Hawke’s Bay District Health Board—Conflicts of Interest Report 
Roy Heather: Urgent Debates — Hawke’s Bay District Health Board—Conflicts of Interest Report 
[Volume:646;Page:14990] 
HEATHER ROY (Deputy Leader—ACT) 
: 
 The review panel’s report into the conflict of interest allegations at Hawke’s Bay District Health Board was exactly as predicted and expected. The report—strangely enough—contains absolutely no mention whatsoever of the then Minister of Health Annette King when Peter Hausmann was appointed to the board. That was an integral part of the problem making it surprising that no reference was made to it at all. The report is also surprisingly short on mention of the role of the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board management because we know that it played quite a part in this conflict of interest situation. The report strongly and sweepingly criticises other board members; it strongly criticises Peter Hausmann’s involvement. What the report does not mention is whether the appointment process that Mr Hausmann underwent when Ms King appointed him to the board was adequate or inadequate or whether it was done appropriately. 
The review panel was in many ways hamstrung from commenting properly on this issue and we have no idea whether we have got to the bottom of this situation. The panel was prevented from looking into every area that should have been looked into because of the narrowness of its brief. The report itself actually raises many more questions—questions that have been asked in this Parliament but not answered—than it answers. The only fair way to deal with the conflict of interest allegations levelled at the board is to immediately hand the entire process over to the Auditor-General for a truly independent review—and by truly independent I mean that no stone should be left unturned. The independent review should go back to early 2005 when Annette King first approached Peter Hausmann to join the board and it should go right through to when the current Minister of Health prematurely sacked the board before the review had any hope of getting out. 
Good people’s reputations are at risk here. In fact it may already be too late—they have already been besmirched I think. The truth must be brought to light. That in itself is reason enough for an independent review to be done by the Auditor-General. If the Minister of Health were really at all interested in not just taking his information from Rick Barker—who is whispering across to him now—from Peter Hausmann or from Chris Clarke but were interested in taking his information across the board then we might actually get a glimmer of the true situation here. 
When did this Minister of Health—who launched in this Parliament such vicious attacks on the board and said what a terrible job it was doing saying that it was not managing the financial constraints properly and not doing this and not doing that—make any attempt to go to Hawke’s Bay to see the board? I asked that question in Parliament and what was the answer? Never; he made no attempt at all. He is an “I’m running the show.” hands-off Minister. Why is that? It is because it is actually much easier to sit in one’s chair or to stand over there on that side of the House and launch attacks on people than to go and find out the truth for oneself. The Minister does not bother about talking to the board. He thinks it is much easier to sit here in Wellington stab people in the back from a distance and not look them in the eye or be interested in hearing their side of the argument and that is reprehensible. The Minister is guilty of ministerial misconduct and should be held responsible for that. 
The Minister’s one-eyed comments today in this House just show where he truly lies. He is pleased that this report has been released now because he can stand up and launch a vitriolic attack unheeded on the board. He will not mention the management—it was not part of this inquiry; the management has been left alone. He can now launch as vitriolic an attack as he wants to on the board without having to worry about the constraints of what the review panel might have or might not have looked into. If the Minister were truly interested in the truth he would pass this on to be reviewed by the Auditor-General. 
In closing the sad thing is that this whole fiasco has diverted the public’s attention away from the real issue: the access the public has to health care in New Zealand. The three deaths that the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board was happy to talk about because those people were not getting proper access to tertiary care at Capital and Coast District Health Board have been lost in this whole mix. I raised those issues in this House and they have now been lost in the whole mix. The Minister is so pleased that this inquiry has gone on and on and has been raised in Parliament because he does not have to deal with the real issue facing New Zealand’s health sector: the lack of access to proper care.