Editorial: Report misses the big picture

It will be the fervent hope of Health Minister David Cunliffe and Director General of Health Stephen McKernan that the report, released yesterday, into conflicts of interest at the Hawke's Bay District Health Board ends speculation about why Mr Cunliffe sacked the former board and appointed a commissioner to run health services in the region. It is a hope that is doomed to disappointment, writes The Dominion Post.

The report, the fruit of an eight-month inquiry by an independent review panel, found a "culture of mistrust and dysfunction" between the board and senior management and criticises the former board, its chairman Kevin Atkinson and businessman Peter Hausmann for failing to adequately manage Mr Hausmann's conflicts of interest when he joined the board.

It also criticises other board members for failing to properly manage their own conflicts of interest. In the words of panel chairman Ian Wilson the situation was akin to "approaching a railway crossing with the lights flashing and driving through regardless".

Board members recognised the need to disclose conflicts of interest, but bewilderingly failed to appreciate that they also had to manage those conflicts.

The report makes no comment on the wisdom of former health minister Annette King appointing Mr Hausmann, the managing director of a company with significant interests in the health sector to the board, no comment on the wisdom of board staff giving Mr Hausmann a tender document ahead of rival bidders for a district health board contract and no comment on the appropriateness of the board's former chief operating officer Ray Lind, Mrs King's husband and now an employee of Mr Hausmann's company, secretly recording a meeting with the whistleblower who first questioned the appropriateness of an e-mail from Mr Hausmann to a staff member.

Mr Wilson says that is because the focus of the review was governance. But given the disquiet created by the sacking of the board just 72 days after it was elected, the existence of a substantially different draft report, the contents of which the National Party has begun dripfeeding in Parliament but which The Dominion Post has been prevented from reporting by lawyers acting on behalf of the director-general of health and Mr Hausmann, and the relatively narrow focus of the inquiry, the report will not be the end of the matter.

The board was clearly remiss in its handling of conflicts of interests. Quite possibly it deserved to be dismissed. But the wider question of whether or not Mr Hausmann should ever have been appointed to the board has not been addressed. Nor has management's role in the debacle.

Mr Cunliffe has achieved the remarkable feat of uniting public opinion in the Hawke's Bay on a health issue, but it is not a feat for which his Labour colleagues will thank him. There is a sense of aggrievement in Hawke's Bay and it is not a sense that will be assuaged by a report into some, but not all, the causes of the health board's troubles.

The region has been poorly served by the board, board staff and government ministers.The only beneficiaries are the National MPs campaigning to retain the Napier and Tukituki electorates later this year.

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