Coleman Jonathan: New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Southern DHB) Elections Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeColeman Jonathan: New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Southern DHB) Elections Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 10 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:10946. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): I have listened to this debate with interest and I must say that it is great to have this outbreak of bipartisanship between Labour and National on this so I thank the Labour Party for its support of the bill. It would have been good to have universal support across the Committee. I am not quite sure why New Zealand First is not supporting it. The Greens through their spokesperson Kevin Hague seem to think this bill is about the removal of democracy. Well it is not actually. It is about the big picture here.The reason for this bill is actually that we have got to restore the sort of financial governance that is required in order to deliver the health services that the people of Otago and Southland absolutely deserve. So you have to keep in mind that big picture. No Minister of Health removes a district health board lightly. I see there are a couple of former Ministers of Health here and they know exactly what I am talking about. We took this decision after all options had been tried over many many years. There were longstanding problems around the financial governance in the Southern District Health Board. We had a Crown monitor there. We had had it under intensive monitoring. There had been many many discussions so it was with a great deal of reluctance that we finally took that step last June to remove the board and put a commissioner in place.I want to pay tribute to the doctors the nurses the physios all the clinical people all the people who work right throughout the Southern District Health Board area in clinical and non-clinical roles because they actually do a fantastic job delivering for the people of the southern region. Working in health care is never an easy job and the primary aim in everything that we are doing in the health sector has to be to make sure that we are getting more and more access to more and more services for more and more of the public all the time. So that is why we need this extra time for the commissioner to do her work.I would just like to commend Kathy Grant for the fantastic job that she is doing down there. It is a very difficult role and she is ably supported by three really great commissioners: Graham Crombie Richard Thomson and—some people have actually forgotten that we have got a third deputy commissioner—Angela Pitchford. So you have got a very well-balanced team there. Actually it is a non-political team in the sense that we have picked the best people to get the job done regardless of where their political sympathies lie and that is what I think is the real strength of that commissioning team that we have got in there right now.Mrs King has raised this amendment—she wants to know whether we could actually reinstate the elected board once the commissioners’ work has been done. Well we thought very carefully about all of the options with regard to the duration of the commissioner and the deputy commissioners in these positions. In the end the consensus is that it is going to take until 2019 to get the job done. It is a big job. You have got to turn around the financial situation you have got to lay the foundations for the excellent clinical services that we have got to deliver down there and ultimately of course—and we are totally committed to this—we have got to rebuild Dunedin Hospital.The idea of having a change to this bill in the form of an amendment actually presents a legal issue because there is no mechanism under the Local Electoral Act to hold an election outside the triennial general election without further amendment. So it would be quite a complex process. I think that goes to the chair of the Health Committee’s point. There also would actually be the loss of economies of scale holding an election outside of the cycle even if we were to go through that very complex process and you would end up with two district health board elections in close proximity. So we are not going to be doing that.Then Ria Bond had her point. She wants to reinstate as I understand it elected members on to the board. What she is asking for actually—the use of clause 16(1) of Schedule 2 of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act—actually only applies in the situation of newly created district health boards. So it would not be legally possible under existing legislation in this case.So look in summary it is a very necessary piece of legislation. I am really grateful that the Labour Party has seen the bigger picture. This is absolutely vital and we will be having an election for this district health board in 2019. Thank you.