Labour leader Chris Hipkins. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
Labour leader Chris Hipkins is casting doubt on the coalition government's claims about Health NZ Te Whata Ora, arguing if the organisation really did refuse to share information with Health Minister Shane Reti he should have acted earlier.
On Monday, Dr Reti announced Professor Lester Levy was replacing Health NZ's board as a commissioner due to "serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook" as the organisation headed towards a $1.4 billion deficit by the end of the financial year by overspending of $130 million per month.
Dr Reti said he found out about Health NZ's financial situation in March and claimed "they refused to share information with the Minister, and with the Ministry of Health, and actually with Treasury". Hipkins finds that "very difficult to believe".
"The Minister of Health under our government was being given regular financial and other updates from Health NZ," Hipkins told RNZ's Morning Report.
"The flow of information - from conversations I've had with her - was very good. So I'm not sure what happened when there was a change in government that stopped that, or if it was simply he stopped asking the right questions.
"It's a Crown entity and probably the biggest Crown entity in the country. The idea that they wouldn't be providing financial information to the government monitoring agencies into their minister isn't particularly credible. If that was the case, I would be astounded that he didn't do something about it earlier."
Labour accuse govt of 'political spin' over Health NZ changes
Levy said on Tuesday that Health NZ is "totally bloated" with bureaucracy after Dr Reti blamed the financial blowout on the previous government's "botched health reforms". But Labour has staunchly denied this allegation and Hipkins continued to do so on Morning Report.
"Let's be really clear about this - the deficit that they're currently talking about is something that has emerged since March of this year," he said.
"It's not something inherited from the last government, it's happened under this government's watch and desperately trying to pedal blame back to the last government is farcical.
"The issues the government are claiming they inherited simply weren't. These are things that have come up during their time in government."
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said Health NZ was not meeting the outcomes against the targets the government has set, was not managing its budget, and had no clear organisational model.
Luxon said no level of funding can fix the failures of governance and financial management at the health agency, but the failures "do require an urgent and significant intervention".
He pointed to the government having invested an additional $16.3b into the health system from the next three Budgets.
Meanwhile, an expert in health systems is not convinced that the health agency's new commissioner will do a better job than the board.
Health systems expert on changes at Te Whatu Ora
Otago University's Professor Robin Gauld says the benefits of the reshuffle are unclear, arguing a board is just as capable of making effective decisions as a commissioner.
"If you have a good board of four or five people, they could come to the same kind of conclusions that a single commissioner would," Gauld said.
"I guess putting in a commissioner is providing an opportunity for the government to say 'we want certain things to happen and we don't want debate around that'."