Tabuteau Fletcher: Urgent Debates — Health Ministry—Financial Management of Building ProjectText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTabuteau Fletcher: Urgent Debates — Health Ministry—Financial Management of Building Project[Sitting date: 08 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9440. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First): This debate is a question that is about honesty and integrity. I sat there listening with earnest interest to what the Minister had to contribute to this debate. I wanted to understand how he was going to explain the situation to the House. I was busy listening but the Minister literally had no reply to the issue that we are talking about in this urgent debate as of this moment. There was literally nothing. It was an abuse of a member who has not had control of those ministerial reins for over 11 years and yet he felt it was topical to talk about that now to drag it up and somehow cast aspersions on someone who had nothing to do with this farce. The reply did attempt to finally get around to spinning numbers but that is what it came down to in the end: it was an attempt to spin statistics.We saw that a lot in the House this afternoon during question time actually. Whenever we asked a Minister an earnest question about what they were doing—with education the police the prisons—we were spun numbers. To ask this Government to now talk to this House to talk to the people of New Zealand with honesty and integrity seems to be too much to ask. It is truly upsetting to see. There have been calls for the Minister to resign and I am sure the caucus will agree with me when I say we fully endorse those calls.But actually it should not be a question about whether that Minister is going to resign. The question now should be whether the Prime Minister will get some guts stand up and actually hold that Minister to account for the failings that he has allowed to be perpetrated under his watch and actually more than his watch—under his discretion and his direction. It has been a travesty and there has been no attempt to reply and to show accountability for their actions. At least I will concede the Minister got it right when in previous statements he described the situation as a severe bungle but that is all he seems to be willing to admit. This is a $24 million refit. It is a debacle coupled with the payroll issue from another Minister whom we have often heard about in this House.What we were concerned to hear about today and what has come to light is how Cabinet decided that Treasury did not need to be a part of this process. For some reason it was good enough for the Minister of Health and the Minister of Finance to sidestep procedure and undertake this process themselves. What we have discovered is that we have got this $18 million commitment over 15 years—so we are talking about more than $1 million a year in financial commitments—to offset this mistake this failing of this Minister. What was upsetting tonight was that the Minister denied that this will affect New Zealanders and their health care.I put it to the Minister that it does not matter how we label the title of the budget and it does not matter what budget he says the money is coming from: New Zealanders and their health care will be undermined by the lack of funds now available to the health care budget. That is the bottom line when it comes to money and what the reality is in this situation right now. I mention that they delegated responsibility to the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Health. Treasury clearly highlighted—it said that it was Cabinet that had sidestepped correct procedure.But I am sure Steven Joyce is not surprised at all by this stuff and the stuff-ups that have been occurring. He has seen it happen under his “super” leadership. His rule has almost continuously seen these kinds of mistakes and stuff-ups. I personally am not surprised to see that transfer into Cabinet procedure; and now we see this come to fruit which is completely unacceptable. These Ministers have made mistakes. I note here that the Treasury secretary Mr Makhlouf said: “the new bid for funding brings into question the governance and financial management practices of the ministry”. He went on to say that Treasury had no confidence that the failures would not happen again—absolutely no confidence that this would not happen again. We say to Treasury that there is probably a reason why it has no confidence that this will not happen again; I simply look to those people sitting on the other side of this House. [Interruption] No I will not say that. Neither should it be a surprise to the New Zealand public that these mistakes—more than mistakes; I describe it politely as a mistake. There seems to have been deliberate action here on the part of Cabinet and on behalf of the Ministers to essentially—I put it to the House—cover up this issue.What then upsets the New Zealand First caucus—we ask the Government what it was thinking—was that they did not go to the Auditor-General to look at the accounts. They did not call up the one body that could publicly hold them to account for this financial stuff-up. No they called up a private consulting firm to audit the books—a private consulting firm. This is unacceptable and an insult to this Parliament and an insult to the people of New Zealand. But let us take note of some of the feedback that PricewaterhouseCoopers actually gave in its report. I will just briefly say that the report can be summed up by saying that there were failures of governance failures of capital planning failures of documentation and reporting. The findings by the private consultants were damning even of themselves but the fact that the Auditor-General was not called on is completely unacceptable.The people of Dunedin have been literally crying out for years for this upgrade to their physical asset—to this health facility. This Minister of Finance and this Minister of Health have failed them. They now must suffer the indignity of those conditions for years to come because of this mistake and with no one owning up to it. It is unacceptable. The arrogance the temerity—just today we were told of the police not doing their job by the Minister herself and yet she refused to admit that the Police for example are being underfunded. It just seems to be a practice of passing the buck and it seems to be everyone else’s fault.We in the Opposition are not surprised to discover that the Ministers have failed to do this very simple job. Not only have they failed to do the job but they have deliberately gone out of their way to ensure that they were not held accountable for it. For that the accountability needs to be much more severe and greater than it ever would have been in the first instance. I finish by saying that people looking for health care and people who need the support of this Government have been let down. People will miss out on their health care services. It is unacceptable and this Government and those Ministers need to own up to their mistakes. Thank you.