Smith Nick: General Debate 
Smith Nick: General Debate 
[Volume:638;Page:8414] 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) 
: 
 The reason this Government is on the way down is that we have incompetent Ministers overseeing all of the core important services for the public—whether it is in the important area of health which has been highlighted by Tony Ryall; whether it has been in key areas like public safety and corrections which were highlighted by my colleague Simon Power; or whether it has been in a basic area like education where Katherine Rich has been exposing incompetency. In fact it is hard to think of a single public service that is currently being run competently. 
This debacle over the half-billion-dollar contract with the Auckland District Health Board says three things about the Government. The first is that there is a lack of basic competency. News of the contract was right through the  
New Zealand Herald 
 and the media. Everybody knew that there was this controversy about a member of the district health board getting a half-billion-dollar contract. The Minister of Health Pete Hodgson did absolutely nothing until we are now at the point whereby not only is a core public health service at risk but we have a multimillion-dollar bill coming to the taxpayer. 
The second thing this debacle says about this Government is that there is a complete lack of accountability. Here we have a blatant conflict of interest on the biggest contract I have ever heard of—worth over half a billion dollars—yet a damning High Court decision was released 2½ weeks ago and nobody is accountable. The worst thing is that the Minister of Health has the audacity to say that it is Paul Hutchison’s fault. Well only one member of Parliament was mentioned in the High Court judgment and that was in the context of a comment of praise for Paul Hutchison’s alerting the district health board to that conflict of interest. 
Then we have the really worrying feature which is that the Government whether in corrections education or health does not learn the lessons of its debacles. Here we have Dr Bierre damned by every Minister in this Government but in the next breath they are still happy to do business with him and for him to be responsible for those hundreds of thousands of lab tests for the people of Auckland. 
Government members’ debates have assumed that this debate about lab testing is only about Auckland. I will tell the House what is going on in Nelson because I fear for the million people in Auckland who will have the same sort of debacle. We have had a contract process also take place in our area to which the Minister of Health gave his approval. Let us see what has happened to our lab services this year—and Auckland members might take note as to what will happen after 1 July. Our general practitioners’ spokesperson Graham Loveridge noted that where we used to have STD test results within 24 hours it now takes 7 days. Let us be honest—what does that mean? It means that those diseases will spread further. We have the example of a dear gentleman who receives Warfarin for stroke protection who has consistently for the last 2 years been able to get his test results within 24 hours. He is now waiting for 7 days. As people with a medical background would know that is a life and death issue for such patients. So I wrote to the Minister of Health Pete Hodgson and asked him where the assurances were from the district health board that there would be no deterioration in the quality of lab services for my constituents. The Minister of Health said that it was nothing to do with him—but he had approved the contract. I have the very letter in which he approved it. 
You see the rot runs deep. The very contract process that has been set for lab services in Auckland and Nelson was one that was directed by this Government. In 2002 this Labour Government transferred the responsibilities for lab testing from Health Benefits Ltd to the district health boards with one intent and one intent alone—for the district health boards to have the dirty job of trying to reduce costs regardless of the consequences for patients. The people of Nelson have had a deteriorating lab service as a consequence of this Government’s decision and now the people of Auckland are facing the same sort of consequence.