Roy Heather: Urgent Debates — Hawke’s Bay District Health Board—Appointment of Commissioner 
Roy Heather: Urgent Debates — Hawke’s Bay District Health Board—Appointment of Commissioner 
[Volume:645;Page:14531] 
HEATHER ROY (Deputy Leader—ACT) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance 
. Last week the Minister of Health David Cunliffe sacked unceremoniously the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board or to be fair the seven democratically elected members of the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board. At that time he appointed a commissioner to run the board. The decision has created a prolonged public outcry in Hawke’s Bay. In fact the outcry had begun long before last week. People are understandably feeling aggrieved. They elected the members of the district health board. They know them they trusted them with their health services and now those members have been evicted for reasons that are far from clear and appear to be known only to the Minister himself—and he is making a very poor show of putting them forward in any clear way. 
The issues in Hawke’s Bay have been ongoing for some time. In fact they go back to early 2005. The then health Minister Annette King approached the now famous Peter Hausmann and asked him whether he would be interested in being one of her four Government appointees to the board. At that time the board members themselves and the Ministry of Health raised concerns about his appointment—in particular about possible conflict of interest situations with regard to his company Healthcare New Zealand. But those concerns were overruled by Annette King and Peter Hausmann was in fact appointed to the board. 
Since that time a number of issues have arisen. The Hawke’s Bay District Health Board I would contend is one of the best performing—or it has been—boards in the country if not the best performing. That its members now find themselves in this situation of having been sacked and replaced by a commissioner is unprecedented under the district health board system and has raised many questions that must be answered. The Minister of Health should take his opportunity in this debate to address these questions. 
He wrote to the board on 20 February after some serious issues had been raised in this House. He said that the board had a rapidly deteriorating financial situation. In fact if those figures are looked at today people will find they are at only 1 percent variance with the projected position at this point in time. Not many boards would be able to say that they are as close to their projected positions as this board was so the description “rapidly deteriorating financial performance” is certainly questionable. Alongside that over the past 18 months the district health board had signalled three times to a variety of Ministers of Health that it was concerned about the way that the population-based funding formula was being administered and put in place particularly in relation to itself and it felt that it was being penalised. 
His second concern was the increasing lack of confidence in the board’s integrity. That boils down to one thing: this Minister is feeling that he is being personally attacked. That too is very questionable. If one looks at the media statements it is very hard to see how he could possibly have concluded that. If he is feeling that he cannot take the odd personal attack then perhaps it is time for him to look for not just a new job outside Cabinet but a new job completely come this election. 
The third reason he wrote to the board was what he called the dysfunctional relationships between the board and himself as Minister and between the board and management. A variety of letters have been put forward including some by the Minister himself in which contentions are made that management and the board do not get on. I think there very often are tense relationships between management and governance in any organisation but usually those are worked through. However his evidence has come from two sources it seems: firstly from Peter Hausmann who has some issues with the district health board that are now very well publicised; and secondly from Chris Clarke the chief executive who despite the fact that he was on 2 weeks’ stress leave was not quite so stressed as to not be able to write a letter to clarify his position at that time. 
The fourth concern the Minister raised was about the Auditor-General’s report of 28 January into the district health board. He said that it reflected very poorly upon the board. But having sat on the Health Committee and having seen Auditor-General reports into a wide variety of boards—in fact almost all 21 district health boards—I can say that the board’s results were not out of keeping with those of any of the boards. In fact the board did not receive the worst performance rating on any of the parameters. 
It is often very easy to confuse the roles of governance and management. I do not think that has happened at this board. The governance boards are elected to govern the process and management is meant to deal with the operational matters the day-to-day matters that a board undertakes. 
Two different reports have been talked about in the media of late. The first is the longstanding review into the conflict of interest situation. We eagerly await the second draft being released by the Minister on he said today 17 March. I understand that that process is under way at the moment. However one of the issues surrounding this review is the fact that there have been two drafts. The first and second drafts it now seems to be pretty widely understood are completely different. In fact the second draft takes a position that is almost 180 degrees away from that of the first draft. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: What would that member know? 
HEATHER ROY 
: The Minister of Health will have his chance in a minute. I have not seen the drafts I say to Mr Cunliffe but neither have I made statements in this House that contradict the fact that I say I have not seen them. We eagerly await that draft but we also eagerly await the process—[ 
Interruption 
] 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I am sorry to interrupt my colleague Heather Roy but the Minister of Health will get his chance straight after this speech. He has studiously avoided answering questions in the House on this matter and now when the Speaker gives an opportunity for a debate in this Parliament he is yelling out trying to stifle and shut down that debate. I ask you Mr Assistant Speaker to tell him to be quiet and wait his turn. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Thank you for that Mr Hide. The reality is that people are able to interject but one would expect that they would do it in a manner that would not cause undue disruption to the House. 
HEATHER ROY 
: The fact of the matter is that this review is now so severely compromised by accusations of political interference of cover-ups and of questionable testimonies and by widely differing drafts of the review that there can be no confidence by the public by the Ministry of Health or indeed by this current Minister as to the outcome of it. There is only one viable option that should be taken and the Minister should have taken it long ago—and if he had any credibility at all he would have taken it. The Minister should have the review investigating the allegations of a conflict of interest at the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board handed over immediately to the Auditor-General in order to ensure that the truth of the matter is exposed. No matter how well intentioned the 3-man committee conducting the review it is now operating outside its brief and Mr Cunliffe should immediately instruct the Director-General of Health to hand over the entire process to the Auditor-General. 
The reputations of good people are at risk and the Minister can take that any way he likes. The reputations of good people of good well-intentioned and capable people are at risk and have been compromised. That alone is reason enough for an independent review to be taking place. But most important the people of Hawke’s Bay should be assured that their health priorities are paramount and that past mistakes will not be repeated. 
A second report was highlighted at the weekend. It was an Audit Department report into another contract a completely different contract from the Healthcare one that the conflict of interest review is over. This conflict of interest allegation surrounds a Government-appointed board member—namely the same Mr Peter Hausmann. This time though it is in regard to the Wellcare contract. That organisation is a subsidiary of Mr Hausmann’s company Healthcare and the audit report looking into that particular contract listed 11 failings in the process. The board it transpires was unaware of the contract until a month after it had been signed by the chief executive Chris Clarke. If that does not raise alarm bells with the Minister of Health then he is well past his use-by date and should have gone some time ago. 
But I want to go back to the sacking of the board because that after all is what this debate is about. The Minister when he announced the sacking of the board was doing one thing and let us be very clear about it: the Minister was putting saving face over saving lives. He was saving face for himself he was saving face for his colleague Annette King—who sits not many seats along from him—for her wrongdoings as Minister of Health but most of all he was trying to save face for his Government. Well that will not wash in Hawke’s Bay I say to Mr Cunliffe because I doubt that his Government will get one single vote in Hawke’s Bay this election. Actually that is wrong; it will get three votes. It will get one from Russell Fairbrother one from Michael Cullen and there is probably one other person who will vote for it. 
Rodney Hide 
: Chris Clarke. 
HEATHER ROY 
: That is right—it will be Chris Clarke. Mr Hausmann cannot vote there because he does not live in the area. He lives in Wellington. 
The Hawke’s Bay District Health Board warned Mr Cunliffe about its worsening deficit position but he ignored it as had his predecessor Pete Hodgson. So that was not the real issue. What had happened at Hawke’s Bay was that Mr Cunliffe had set the board up to fail. Every other district health board in this country had four Government appointees put in place on 10 December last year. That allowed those newly elected district health boards to put in place the committees they are legally required to have to get on with their planning processes and to give the public confidence that their health services were respected and would move forward so that access to public health care was able to happen in this country. 
However the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board has been made a scapegoat and I suspect that the decision to sack all of its publicly elected members was made well before the public announcement. In fact I know that because the Hon Parekura Horomia is known to have told people in Wairoa on the weekend before the announcement was made that Cabinet had already made that decision. So it was a farce; it was a farce that the Minister wrote to the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board asking it to answer his four questions because Cabinet had already made that decision. 
Hon Parekura Horomia 
: You’re making it up. 
HEATHER ROY 
: I would tell the Minister to think very carefully about whom he spoke to that weekend because he told people that the decision had already been made. This just gets worse and worse. 
Being seen to criticise the Government is a cardinal sin to Minister Cunliffe—a problem that he feels must be nipped in the bud immediately. His fear is that the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board was allowed to speak the truth for far too long. How long would it be if that were allowed to continue before other district health boards—heaven forbid—followed suit? This announcement was a scare tactic. The Minister Mr Cunliffe was using the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board as an example to frighten away other district health boards from speaking out when they have concerns about health care for their patients. He has used his significant ministerial powers as a form of behaviour therapy. 
I tell New Zealanders to watch out because their district health board might be next. The Minister has a large number of questions to answer. He is responsible to the people of Hawke’s Bay and responsible to the people of New Zealand for public health services and those questions must be answered. One thing is for certain: the truth will out. I am certain that before much longer it will come out. As Minister Cunliffe nods his head and stands up to pretend yet again that he does not know what is in the draft I say that he should be very careful.