Te Whatu Ora chief executive Fepulea'i Margie Apa Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
MPs are questioning if Te Whatu Ora Health NZ's $1.8 billion payback deal with workers will actually stick.
After an eight-year process, the agency is weeks away from beginning to reimburse 270,000 current and past employees for breaches of the Holidays Act dating back to 2010.
But MPs in the finance and expenditure select committee this morning raised the prospect that any individual could challenge how this was being done and upset it.
"Anybody can challenge this and the liability goes back forever," Labour MP and employment lawyer Helen White said.
Te Whatu Ora executives had emphasised to MPs how complex the years of negotiations were between 20 district health boards, the unions and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, which oversees the troublesome Holidays Act, to reach the deal done in 2020 that is being painstakingly implemented now.
Te Whatu Ora is the largest among hundreds of public and private sector employers nationwide that are having to pay out hundreds of millions to fix historical payroll breaches.
The agency's executives told the select committee all those employers were in the same position of being vulnerable to challenge, but White responded: "Not everybody has acknowledged a breach and has a nightmare of all these different entities, etcetera, coming together".
"You have to get this right from now and back, and it sounds like it's a bit blurry.
"So, if you have an agreement now with people, is there a possibility of actually testing that, getting a declaration from the court, so that you're not in this position in another 10 years?"
Labour MP Helen White in Parliament Photo: VNP / Daniela Maoate-Cox
Te Whatu Ora chief executive Margie Apa said the agency would need to get back to the committee about that.
National MP Simon Watts asked why, during the years of talks, no one had taken this to the courts before.
The agency said it sought to reach a consensus deal instead, adding that no other agency had told it not to go to the courts.
Apa said most of its 23 payroll systems were still not compliant with the law, but would become compliant as the payout process was worked through.
However, the law itself has been under review for years, and is heading towards long-delayed and big changes after the general election in October.
MPs were told four districts were in the final stages of work before payouts could begin. The agency said in March these would start in July, while another 10 districts were "on track", and it was trying to "accelerate" three others.
Other MPs asked if this was a "stunning" systems failure, and if the years of wrangling had only added to the final bill by hundreds of millions of dollars.
"We agree that we are holding on to funding that belongs to our workers," Apa told them.
The payback process is expected to stretch into next year.