Johnston on Ryall
NZ Herald Health Reporter Martin Johnston gives Tony Ryall a 9/10 for his performance to date:
After the 1990s National Administration taught the sector that business-minded managers were in charge, terms like “clinical leadership” and “trusting nurses and doctors” have resonance. Mr Ryall’s speeches are rich with them, reflecting his leg-work in Opposition and the evolution of moves started by Labour. He has instructed health boards to give clinicians more decision-making power.
Overseas he found that “clinical networks” – doctors hooking up across boundaries – make health services more effective. Enhancing the prestige of health workers may also counteract the pull of higher salaries overseas, helping to solve the health workforce crisis without massive pay rises.
There are some risks with greater power for clinicians, but there was little doubt the managerial culture had gone overboard, and the secto was drowning in bureaucracy.
Surely this dream run can’t last for a man in a portfolio which traditionally involves nasty public scraps over strikes, treatment delays from under-funded hospitals, or deaths due to medical mistakes.
Perhaps he will be dragged into a messy pay dispute. Health boards are lining up for what Waitemata DHB has told Mr Ryall will be staff-cost growth “based on a zero per cent increase on all employment agreements expiring during 2009/10″.
The pressures will only get worse.
He has incurred the ire of public health practitioners over cut-backs to anti-obesity funding, but these are in line with National’s philosophy that what we eat and how much we exercise are matters of personal choice and not socially nor environmentally determined.
And National is still funding many public health programmes. What Tony stopped funding was lobby groups to lobby the very Government that funds them.
Tony should also be looking at the funding of Te Reo Marama, as detailed by Whale Oil. They’ve had $1.2 million since 2004 and most of what they do seems to be attend overseas conferences and write letters to the editor.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Ah, Te Reo Marama – I wondered when that little “issue” would rate a mention DPF. WhaleOil seems to have landed himself a very large and very smelly fish there. The more that he discloses, the worse the smell gets, and today’s instalment indicates some decidely dodgy dealings…
http://whaleoil.gotcha.co.nz/2009/11/05/exclusive-te-reo-marama-troughing-103/
November 5th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Ryall looks more comfortable and more effective in this portfilio with each passing week. The Herald is correct – Health is usually a sinking-sand for all but the best, and Ryall is proving himself to be just that.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Indeed getstaffed. And although Labour regularly slags off Ryall about being “a throwback to the 90’s” , perhaps his experiences then are helping him this time around.
November 5th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
While on about Te Reo Marama, there was (possibly still is) a guy called Fritz at Hari Hari (on the West Coast). He trained as an electronic engineer, but there would be little scope for his skills there. He got the unemployment benefit but it was cancelled because he was not prepared to do manual work on the coast or move somewhere where he could get an electronics job. He claimed that as he was ‘working’ he was not available for employment and should keep the dole. His work was ‘very important’ – writing letters to the Queen, Governor General, etc concerning important constitutional matters. The High Court was not impressed.
Anyway the point is that he had the wrong idea. He needed to have moved to Auckland or Wellington then set up some group like Te Reo Marama. He would now be rolling in it (the mud perhaps, when his snout was not in the trough).
November 6th, 2009 at 12:48 am
Ryall is a homosexual
HARD FACT
November 6th, 2009 at 8:05 am
Dirty Rat – so what? So is another minister and a prominent feminist who is a former National MP (front page story in ‘Truth’ at the time).
November 6th, 2009 at 10:01 am
Dirty Rat – Can’t find an argument to counter that Tony Ryall is doing a good job so let’s go with a personal attack because you’re bigotted mind can’t see that results are what really count in government.
I’ve heard him speak about Health, he has a passion about making life easier for the Doctors, Nurses and other professionals to do their jobs. It’s all he spoke about. He’s proud that one of his first actions was to tell the Ministry of Health that all the reports they require from DHBs are no longer required. And he measures his sucess not in activity, but outcomes that benefit patients, doctors, nurses, hospital workers. Unlike the previous government who thought funding numerous lobby groups would stop people getting sick.