Peek-a-boo politics: Scrutiny in the dark

The House: Parliament has a single focus this week. There are no debates, no bills, no question times. It is scrutiny week, when the 12 subject select committees spend many hours quizzing senior officials (and some ministers), about government entity performances.

Parliament is the boss of the government, and keeping an eye on its spending and outcomes are among its core roles. That requires good, accurate, timely information.

The focus of opposition MPs' questions to Health Minister Dr Shane Reti was regarding a glaring difference between his earlier predictions of Health New Zealand's end-of-year numbers and the outcome.

"You claimed Health New Zealand was on track for a deficit of $1.8 billion," began Labour's health spokesperson Dr Ayesha Verrall. "You were wrong by a billion dollars. Can you explain that?"

"You stood on a podium earlier in this year, fired a board, appointed a commissioner, started a reign of health cuts, saying there would be a $1.6 to $1.8 billion deficit - that is not true. Did you manufacture a crisis to justify your cuts?"

"No, you manufactured the crisis," Reti replied, "and what we've needed to do is actually needed to fix it."

So then, Parliament is a workplace where, during an annual performance review, someone might respond to their supervisor: 'No, you screwed up.'

There was a more serious issue though. The crucial numbers had been released by the Minister's office - just one day before the hearing. It's hard not to interpret this as Dr Reti intentionally trying to prevent an effective review of the government's largest spending area. It's certainly not acting in good faith.

Scrutiny reviews are largely based on each entity's annual report, tabled in Parliament by the Minister responsible, according to their statutory obligations. Opposition MPs had done well to find that billion dollar mistake in Health New Zealand's massive annual report, given the time they had. What might they have missed?

"We're expected to be across a 200-something plus [page] report, in order to hold you [to] account," Verrall said. "This is an unprecedented level of secrecy about important public spending."

Reti blamed the Office of the Auditor General for the delay, though when questioned further he admitted he had received the report in plenty of time.

"The Annual Report arrived in my office, by memory, over this past week, or two, as I recall. I would need to get you, I can get you specific timings."

For reference, the tabling of the annual report of a Crown entity like Health NZ is legislatively mandated. Reports travel from the entity to the auditor general, back to the entity, to the responsible minister and finally are tabled in Parliament.

There are absolute time limits for each of those steps, (as per sections 150 & 156 of the Crown Entities Act). Even if everyone in that chain took as long as they were legally permitted to, Reti was obliged to table that report in Parliament by 21 November - two weeks ago.

By his own accounting he had likely received the report by that point. He just chose not to table it until the very last moment - unlawfully late.

The reasons he gave for his delay - "clearly, we needed to have a look at it, and we wanted to understand it as well so that we could be prepared."

Reti's own preparation was surely helped by denying an equal chance for preparation to those responsible for holding him to account. It certainly did not serve anyone else's interests, including those of an effective system of responsible government.

RNZ's The House, with insights into Parliament, legislation and issues, is made with funding from Parliament's Office of the Clerk.