Turei Metiria: Urgent Debates — Health Ministry—Financial Management of Building ProjectText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTurei Metiria: Urgent Debates — Health Ministry—Financial Management of Building Project[Sitting date: 08 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9438. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): So the Ministry of Health makes a major financial mistake—losing $18 million—and the Minister knows about it and he hides it from the New Zealand public. He has just spent 15 minutes shouting about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement and about Annette King and about anything else he can make up in his own mind and he has not explained to New Zealanders why he hid from the New Zealand public the fact that the ministry lost $18 million. He knew about it. The Minister knew that the ministry had made such a major financial mistake. He knew about it. He did nothing about it.Hon Annette King: He covered it up.METIRIA TUREI: I agree with Annette King. The Minister covered it up. He had an opportunity last year as I understand to tell the New Zealand public that the ministry had made this mistake. Perhaps he could have called for an inquiry or initiated an inquiry into that mistake—Grant Robertson: Or the Auditor-General.METIRIA TUREI: —or yes asked the Auditor-General to look at the financial mistake that was made. It is $18 million that was lost after all. He could have told the New Zealand public that a mistake had been made and he was handling it and making sure it would be managed properly. None of that happened. Not a single part of good governance of effective ministerial management happened when the Ministry of Health lost $18 million. And the Minister today had a 15-minute opportunity to tell the New Zealand public what had happened how he found out what he then did about it to try to fix it and what he expects to happen from this point on. Did the Minister talk about any of those things?Hon Annette King: No.METIRIA TUREI: No he did not. Did he provide the New Zealand public with any confidence that this is a Minister who has a handle a grip on his ministry? No he did not because he does not know what is happening in his own ministry. That causes very serious concerns for the Green Party and for Labour which raised this urgent debate and it should do for the New Zealand public as well. It certainly did for Treasury when Treasury discovered that this mistake had been made. The Ministry of Health got a letter from the head of Treasury saying that the fact that the ministry had lost this money brought into question the governance and financial management practices of the Ministry of Health.I will just note that the Ministry of Health is one of the core services that New Zealanders need to be confident is operating well and is operating effectively and efficiently with the budget that it has. We know that the budget is being squeezed in health. We know that more and more New Zealanders particularly older New Zealanders are needing more and better quality health-care. We know that there are thousands of New Zealand children who suffer from avoidable illnesses and also need high-quality health-care from the Ministry of Health. So for the Ministry of Health to be told by Treasury that Treasury has serious concerns about its financial management should cause uproar amongst New Zealand families because we cannot afford to have a ministry that is not managing its scarce resources properly. We must have a Ministry of Health that does have a handle on its accounts and does know whether it has $24 million or just $6 million in its reserves. How could we have any confidence in a ministry and a director-general that do not know what their financial picture is? And of course the Minister did not bother to ask the right questions and when he did find out that there was a problem he did not tell the New Zealand public. It had to be exposed rather than them taking control of the situation.We know that Pharmac needs more money to provide medicines—important critical medicines that will save the lives of thousands of New Zealanders. Our hospitals doctors nurses and district health boards are all crying out for more money so that they can take care of their communities. I live in Dunedin. We need a new hospital—desperately urgently. We know that the services there are being squeezed. The people in Dunedin feel this every day that they turn up to accident and emergency to have a health issue dealt with. All of those people in Dunedin and communities just like them around the country deserve better from the Ministry of Health and from the Minister. We know that mental health care is being cut in Canterbury—in Canterbury the area where there is the greatest need at the moment for genuine mental health care and services to help people ride through what is continuing to be a traumatic experience post-quakes. The money is not there for that.We have seen money disappear out of the Ministry of Health and money being cut from essential services in Christchurch and Canterbury. We have thousands of people every year who are living with serious pain because the surgery that they desperately need is being put off. Why? It is not that we do not have the expertise. We have the skills. We have the doctors and the nurses who can do that work who can provide that surgery. We do not have the financial resources to make sure that surgery is available to all of those people who need it. There are many many New Zealanders who are suffering simply because there is not enough money in the system to go around. On top of all of that the real and desperate needs of New Zealanders every day in this country—we have a Minister who seems to think that a hands-off approach to his ministry is good enough; a Minister who will sign off on an $18 million handout to his ministry to cover the mistake that it has made and to cover the mismanagement of the finances and not tell the New Zealand public about it.This is a debacle that happens when you have a Minister who is asleep at the wheel: financial mismanagement operational ineptness and a complete mishandling of taxpayers’ money for such a critical and essential service. The health Minister is responsible for this stuff-up and everyone in the House and taxpayers and New Zealanders around the country will not have to look much further than the monument that is in Molesworth Street now to see the consequences of that muck-up. New Zealanders deserved better from their Minister. I accept that when you are a Minister of a major agency like the Ministry of Health there will be mistakes made. Yeah of course there will be mistakes made but we look to our Ministers to show that they are capable of dealing with those mistakes when they are made—Ministers who are honest with the New Zealand public who will tell us what is going on and who will demonstrate to us that he or she is taking the situation in hand and has some control over it. It is a great disappointment that Minister Coleman the Minister of Health failed so miserably to do that today. Thank you.