Hague Kevin: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHague Kevin: General Debate[Sitting date: 19 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16811. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KEVIN HAGUE (Green):In 2009 a man named Michael Swann was sent to prison for defrauding his employer the Otago District Health Board of millions of dollars. The Minister of Health Tony Ryall was so incensed by the district health board’s handling of the case that he sacked the board chair tore strips off the board and appointed a Crown monitor. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that this particular Minister was very interested in the subject of fraud particularly against the Southern District Health Board.I am not expressing an opinion about whether or not the actions of South Link Health in relation to about $15 million of taxpayers’ health funds were legal or not. What I am clear about—and I remind members that I was intimately involved in this matter from 2003 to 2008—is that the South Island district health boards and particularly the Otago and then Southern District Health Board which led action on the matter believed very strongly that South Link Health had spent money outside the scope of its contract and without authorisation and that they had evidence to establish this.By 2010 the Southern District Health Board was ready to take the matter to court having spent 7 years of negotiation and then mediation without achieving any progress at all and with no prospect of success if the process were prolonged. I also know that in 2010 the Southern District Health Board had received at least one and possibly two legal opinions to the effect that fraudulent behaviour may have occurred. First Tony Ryall claimed in this House that he thought that this was a commercial dispute not involving allegations that public funds had been misused. Now he concedes that he knew all along that this was the nature of those allegations. He first claimed to have had no involvement. He now concedes that in 2010 he advised the district health board not to take the matter to court.As every district health board chair and chief executive officer in the country knows the Minister’s advice is actually an instruction. He has claimed several times—most recently in his answer to my primary question on 5 March—that former district health board chief executive Brian Rousseau was wrong to say that senior Ministry of Health officials were kept well-informed about the matter and about the fraud possibility. He says that they did not know about a possible fraud until late 2013. Today I have released correspondence—in response to Mr Rousseau’s request that I help defend his reputation—that proves that senior ministry officials clearly were in the loop and were aware that fraud had been raised as a possibility in 2010. I am looking forward to the Minister correcting this answer as well in the House.What this shows is that the Minister’s account is completely implausible. His story now is that in an environment where everybody knew that he was super-sensitive about the possibility of fraud the board and senior staff of the district health board South Link Health itself his senior ministry and National Health Board officials and his own monitor at the Southern District Health Board all knew that fraud had been raised as a possibility but nobody thought to tell him until late last year when the Auditor-General raised the matter.Hon Annette King: Unbelievable.KEVIN HAGUE: It is very very hard to believe and I do not believe it. I call on the Minister to release immediately all the advice he received from officials about this matter. I have to call on him to do this because the Ministry of Health from which I have requested many documents under the Official Information Act including advice to the Minister has refused to release every document except one: the Auditor-General’s advice—the one document it knew I already had. I believe that even the interference that the Minister admits to having made in this case is inappropriate and steps over the line. If it can be proved that he knew about the possibility of fraud that would be completely and utterly unacceptable.