Hague Kevin: New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Southern DHB) Elections Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHague Kevin: New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Southern DHB) Elections Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 05 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:10846. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KEVIN HAGUE (Green): Thank you very much—[Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Oh look you two old—Kevin Hague has the call.KEVIN HAGUE: Thank you very much Mr Deputy Speaker—I will reset. The Green Party supported Jonathan Coleman’s appointment of commissioners to replace the board members of the Southern District Health Board and we did so with a heavy heart. It is not something that we readily do and our reasons for doing so—for actually suspending the democratic representation of the people of the Southern District Health Board area—were different from the reasons that the Minister of Health had for appointing commissioners.Our reasons were primarily twofold. We said that the members of that district health board had failed in their basic responsibility to represent the interests of the people who lived in that district. We said for example that that district health board was facing unreasonable financial requirements from the Minister and that that board had failed to stand up for the interests of people living in that district.The Southern District Health Board came about through the amalgamation—the forced amalgamation—of two districts Otago and Southland. One of the things we know about the population-based funding formula is that although it tends to work fairly well for district health boards that are of a middling size it does not work so well for district health boards with very rural catchments because of the diseconomies of scale that they face. At the other end of the scale it does not work well for district health boards providing tertiary-level services because actually they have an inherently higher cost structure in needing to be able to provide those more advanced services. The Southern District Health Board is an amalgam of both of those kinds of district health boards so of course it was under extraordinary financial pressure and the district health board failed to stand up to the Minister with his repeated requirements around breaking even. That was one reason.We had another particular reason because of an issue that we had raised repeatedly and that was the dispute between South Island district health boards and an organisation called South Link Health over funds that had been retained by South Link Health. The Southern District Health Board had the responsibility to try to get those funds back—whatever the more elegant word is for that—and again the Minister had gone to the district health board and said: “I don’t want you to take court action.” So even though the district health board had clear evidence that South Link Health had retained funds inappropriately and it had legal opinions saying that potentially fraud had occurred it took no action because the Minister said that he did not want it. Again we said at the time that the Southern District Health Board should have stood up to the Minister and done what was right for the people of that district.I did not say at the time—but I could have done—that actually the district health board’s decision to contract with Compass Group for food was also a disastrous decision made under pressure from the Minister. We were very clear that the decision to actually make the food somewhere else was not in the interests of the health of the patients of that district was not in the interests of the economy of the Otago and Southland regions and was potentially disastrous in the case of some kind of natural disaster where actually having a local service would have been appropriate in general. You know it does not make sense to contract out a service that you actually need to use every day all the time like a hospital kitchen.Those were our reasons for supporting the appointment of commissioners. Since then under the watch of the commissioners there has been more money that has gone into the district health board with the Minister finally recognising—not enough yet—that the district health board was underfunded. The district health board has now given up under the watch of the commissioners on regaining that funding from South Link Health and we have seen both patients and community appalled and angry about the slop—and I agree with Clare Curran’s word—that is being served up to the patients in Dunedin and Invercargill hospitals. So there is some progress there but also some things that have not improved and we have also seen some things that have got worse.The Health Committee’s report talks about this issue of transparency and the Minister says that the commissioners have agreed to improve transparency by allowing the public into the advisory committee meetings. Well that is not really what the people of Otago and Southland are calling for when they say they demand transparency. We heard from various submitters—and in particular from Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu—about the fact that the district health board’s statutory duty to honour the Treaty of Waitangi had effectively been suspended by the appointment of commissioners and by the way they had gone about their task. We have heard from the Minister today that there is good news: what is going to happen now is that the commissioners have agreed to work with the rūnanga to work out the appointment of representatives of Kai Tahu on to the advisory committees. Well again that falls short of the requirement that is actually in the law. So yes the commissioners appear to be doing some very good work but also some things seem to have got worse.It is evident to the Green Party and it should be evident to everybody in this House that the people of Otago and Southland want their democratic right back. They want the right to be able to appoint their representatives on to the district health board. The Green Party will be voting to support that right. We will be opposing the bill at this reading and at subsequent readings. In refusing to agree to that demand from the people of Otago and Southland the Minister and the Government is actually answering a question: to whom should the district health board be accountable? They are answering that question with the wrong answer because they are making the primary accountability to the Government and not to the people of that district. That is the wrong answer.Continuity of the work that the commissioners have begun is important and it could have been achieved if the Government had picked up the suggestion by Dr John Chambers that the commissioners be appointed by the Minister under the powers that he has to the appointed positions on the board. That could have been done while retaining the democratic rights of the people of the southern region. That would have been the right thing to do.