Coleman Jonathan: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Coleman Jonathan: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:646;Page:15026] 
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (National—Northcote) 
: 
 It is very timely that we are having this financial review of the Ministry of Health today because yesterday we had a report released into the public domain commissioned by the Ministry of Health into the goings on at Hawke’s Bay District Health Board. We had an urgent debate about that same report today where we were treated to frankly a histrionic display by the Minister vainly trying to justify his actions and the position that he has taken. There is no question that the actions the Minister has taken in sacking that district health board will mean there will not be much of a vote for Labour in the Hawke’s Bay this coming election. If people like Rick Barker think they are coming back to Parliament as constituency MPs although I do not think even the Hon Rick Barker would be that—[ 
Interruption 
]—optimistic that would be right. 
The interesting thing about this report is not what it says but rather what it leaves out and there are some glaring omissions. The key thing we have to ask when we read that report is why on earth the former Minister of Health Annette King appointed Peter Hausmann to the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board in the first place. This is a man who had been extensively tied up with business interests and doing work for the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board since 2003. So if the Minister could not see a conflict of interest on the horizon goodness knows what it would have taken to draw that to her attention. But you see in this report there is absolutely no mention of why Annette King appointed Peter Hausmann to the district health board. 
The other interesting point is that there is absolutely no comment on management’s conduct and performance—no mention at all. We have to ask why that is. Why was the focus so intensively on the board’s performance rather than on that of management? When we look at who was involved in senior management there and trace some of the connections back maybe the answer starts to become a bit more apparent. The chief executive officer of Hawke’s Bay District Health Board one Chris Clarke was a long-term employee of the Prime Minister working as a special adviser in her office. Then of course the chief operating officer was Mr Ray Lind who is married to the now former Minister of Health Annette King. So members can see that there were some people in senior management roles there who had very very senior Labour connections and that there may well have been a vested interest for the Government to look after those people. This is a clear case where the cronies at Hawke’s Bay District Health Board were in senior management rather than on the board itself. 
But a lot of other issues are not covered in this report. Quite crucially there is the question of what happened to the deleted emails. Why is there is no mention of the treatment of the whistleblower who actually brought these severe conflicts of interest to light? There was talk previously in the leaked draft report of the taping of conversations by Ray Lind—that is not covered at all. Of course there is nothing about any disclosures that Mr Hausmann made prior to his appointment; they are not covered. 
This report says that Mr Hausmann was pretty severely conflicted and that should have been quite evident to any Minister of Health who appointed him. We have a situation here where things really do stink at the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board. The Government’s reaction has been to sack the board. That has been very unpopular. National does not believe it goes to the root of the problem. We believe it is a cover-up for some of the things that went on behind the scenes that have not been addressed in this report. 
We know about this type of report because there was one last year; it is very much like the Ingram report. The terms of reference are framed so tightly that the inquiry can never actually answer the crucial questions that the public deserve to get answers to. That is a real problem and I think it is going to hang around this Government right through to the election. 
When we look at what else is happening in health when we look at the stories we have heard at the Health Committee—stories of Wanganui Hospital where the surgeon Roman Hasil was appointed who was not qualified to do the work he was doing and ended up maiming 26 women in Wanganui and stories of what has happened at the Waitemata District Health Board where patients are lying on stretchers in corridors and people cannot get into the accident and emergency department—we know that this Government cannot deliver on health. It has had 9 years now and quite frankly if it cannot fix it after 9 years we know that it never will. The Government has doubled spending from $6 billion to $12 billion a year but things are getting worse not better. 
I was at Waitemata District Health Board yesterday for a meeting and I thought I would call in. What did I find? I found someone sitting on a trolley in the waiting room.