On Wednesday night, I went down to the church hall on the corner of my street for the Somerfield and Lower Cashmere political debate. These two resident’s associations are in the Banks Peninsula electorate, and combine their powers and catchments to put about 80 people - with a good amount of space between each seat - into the St Mark’s church hall.
There were seven candidates in all, with TOP, the New Conservatives, and the NZ Public Party being represented alongside 4 of the 5 parties in parliament - NZ First, the Greens, Labour and National. With Ruth Dyson stepping down, the head-to-head contest between Labour’s Tracey McLellan and National’s Catherine Chu was the most interesting aspect. After each candidate gave a 5 minute speech about themselves, we got into the questions. These were written by the audience before the meeting started, and then grouped by the moderator. As I turned up late, I didn’t get to ask mine - but it didn’t matter, as a number of the audience had already written down variations on the same thing: what do you think of the situation at the CDHB, and specifically to CDHB member Chu, what is your role in the whole thing?
All the other candidates had a chance to answer, before Chu took to the lectern. I got out my phone to record her answer, as I thought it might be interesting - and I was right.
(I’ve written about this previously, but a quick primer. Chu was elected to the CDHB at the local body elections last year. The board has presided over an implosion in the senior management of the DHB, with 7 of the 11 top executives, including the CEO David Meates, having resigned this winter, in part due to pressure from the board to make massive cuts to the budget that the management believed would lead to reductions in services.)
She answered first with her CDHB hat on, talking about “joining” the board in December of 2019, as if she had been peer-pressured into joining the work indoor netball team, rather than it being a role she had actively campaigned for for months. She then switched to her “National Party hat”, and I’ll post the transcript below, as it was remarkable:
How do we address this deficit situation, how do we liaise with not only the staff but also the Ministry, but also the community, because we’re elected there for the community
The loss of organisational knowledge with senior management being exited, I think that the Ministry really needs to step up and show leadership, and I’m quite optimistic because we did have Dr Ashley Bloomfield come down to Christchurch and begin conversations and I believe that they are quite open minded as to what the next steps should be. The management has made the case quite clear that the $60m of the deficit is due to the facility delay such as the Hagley Building and the National Party if we were elected in government we would remove any hurdles that were in the way of not making this happen and we’d make this happen as soon as possible.
My question would be why did the government top-slice $94.8m of funding for CDHB this year, the biggest increase in dollar terms of any DHB? But my response as a National Party candidate is that National will provide clear leadership because I think it is time that the Ministry did step in. I do think that it has got to the point unfortunately and I’m very realistic of the position in the board is in, I get a lot of feedback that the community has lost confidence in the board, so I do think it is time that the Ministry showed leadership and the Ministry did step in in order to resolve this quickly. I always say this time and time again, but trust isn’t something that you can just get with a click of a finger, it is something that is earned. While the community has lost trust in the health care system in Canterbury, I think we really need to work hard to restore that trust with the community. I think the only way now at the moment to be able to do that is for the Ministry to step in, and if National was elected into government we would show strong leadership and step in to make sure this issue was resolved.
She admitted that the community had lost confidence in the board, and then said that the Ministry (of Health) should step in, not once, not twice, but five times. She said that the community had lost trust (in the Board that she is a member of) and that the only way to get it back was for the Ministry to intervene. She repeatedly called for the Ministry to show leadership, ie do the job she was elected (and is still getting paid) to do.
She said that if elected, National would do just that - but I’ve been following this situation since it broke, and I’m not aware of either National’s leader or health spokesperson having said anything about the Ministry intervening. I’d be really interested in knowing whether this is National Party policy, or just something said on the hood.
She’s calling for the Ministry of Health to step in and sack the board because they’re not up to it. She’s saying that’s what she would do if her party was in government. And she’s doing this at an event where she’s asking us to vote for her as our community representative in Parliament.
Of course if Chu has lost the confidence of the community she was elected to represent, as she admitted, then she doesn’t have to wait for the Ministry to intervene. She could take the advice of one of the people in the front row, who asked when she sat back down “why don’t you just resign?”
I have also written to Catherine Chu to express my disappointment that she has either shown at best inexperience and naivety, at worst directly colluded with Hansen, Huria and Levy to prioritise rapid deficit reduction over delivery of health to cantabrians.
However it may pay to analyse Tracy McLennans answer also because
A labour health minister installed Lester Levy
A labour health minister replaced John wood and Mark Solomon in the middle of the reconciliation process with John Hansen (who has stated his primary responsibility is to the shareholder) and Gabriella Huria.
A labour health minister gave the directive for all DHB’s to be zero deficit in 2 years (irrespective of size or cause, and irrespective of whether there was a pre-existing management plan)
Levy, Hansen and the new board (aside from Kane, Dickerson and Marshall) have followed the instructions of both labour health ministers who have continued to express confidence in the board (as has the prime minister) throughout this crisis.
The refusal of the board chair, health minister, a (fairweather friend) prime minister and local labour MP’s to front the media on this speaks for itself. The Labour health minister is still yet to visit chch to speak to the management or staff regards their concerns.
Both major parties have their sticky fingers in this but at least Chu is doing what we would expect a National party candidate to do regarding prioritising deficit reduction - whether the actions of the labour health ministers, local MP's or prime minister with regard to CDHB are what we expect or deserve from this party is very questionable