Kiwiblog

NZPA report that Chris Clarke has resigned as CEO of the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board.

I think this was inevitable and necessary. The inquiry into the DHB highlighted a number of inappropriate actions by Clarke, and he didn’t have the confidence of his Board.

The last straw may have been his plans to speak at a conference about how to deal with conflict in a board room. He claimed he never agreed to speak and it was a mistake. However the agenda actually listed not just him, but how his presentation would ahve four parts to it – what happened, why it happened, what a CEO can learn from it and Why it is working so much better now.

His agreement to do this, without even the knowledge of the Board Commissioner, is another example of flawed judgement.

There are numerous stories in the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board report.

First the main Herald story by Paula Oliver:

But it is what was missing from the report which will be the subject of ongoing argument.

The review did not canvas questions of whether former Health Minister Annette King should have appointed Mr Hausmann to the board.

The panel decided that topic was out of the scope of its report.

The report also did not delve into allegations that the board’s chief executive Chris Clarke colluded with Mr Hausmann over a contract.

The treatment of the whistleblower who drew attention to the conflict also was not canvassed in the report.

Yep, it all comes down to the terms of reference.  This is how the Ingram Report found Field had done no wrong, yet the Police have laid dozens of charges against him. Ingram was only allowed to look into Field’s actions as a Minister. Likewise this report was not allowed to cover Annette King’s actions or the actions of management.

John Armstrong writes the report vindicates David Cunliffe’s decision to sack the Board:

Health Minister David Cunliffe professes to be satisfied with the damning findings of the independent review of Hawkes Bay’s troubled district health board.

Satisfied? Cunliffe should be satisfied – deliriously so. If his Beehive office were not so cramped he would have been excused performing cartwheels across it.

But he notes:

While Cunliffe can claim to have been vindicated, King, however, cannot claim to have been cleared by the report in terms of the wisdom of appointing Hausmann to the board.

Determining that it was outside the scope of its terms of reference, the panel rejected the board’s request to examine King’s role.

Marty Sharpe in the Dom Post focuses on the former Chair, KevinAtkinson, calling it a whitewash:

Kevin Atkinson, sacked with the rest of the board last month, says the “weasel word” report is a “whitewash in every sense of the word”. He urges the auditor-general to investigate.

But Health Minister David Cunliffe says the report, which criticises the board for failing to meet basic conflict of interest procedures and highlights major rifts with senior management, justifies his decision to sack it.

There certainly was a rift with senior management. But if I was a director and my senior management had been secretly taping conversations, improperly allowing a fellow director preferred access to RFP details, not implementing board decisions etc then I might have a rift also.  Whose fault the rift is, is something that was out of bounds for the report as management were excluded. The Auditor-General is his report on one contract found much to criticise.

NZPA reports today that the Minister denies any political interference with the report, and that there is more information to come out.

Finally the Dom Post editorial says the report misses the big picture:

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.

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.

Indeed it is far from over. The number of unanswered questions remains high.

Some quotes from Hansard relating to yesterday’s question time in the House:

Hon Tony Ryall: Is the Minister aware of the email that shows that chief executive Chris Clarke instructed staff to send draft tender documents to Mr Hausmann—who had indicated he would be a bidder—some weeks before the tender process opened, and before any other bidder saw the documents; and is this acceptable behaviour?

Surely this is a joke. No CEO would have draft tender documents sent weeks early to a potential bidder, and even more so if they are on your Board.

Hon Tony Ryall: Is he aware of this email that shows that Mr Hausmann, appointed by the Labour Government, having received this confidential draft tender document, proposed changes that would benefit his company, and is that what he would expect of someone being appointed to the board of that very district health board?

If I got inside information on a government tender, I wouldn’t suggest changes to it. I’d delete it unread.

Hon Tony Ryall: Is he aware from this email that the chief executive agreed to alter the tender documents in precisely the terms proposed by Mr Hausmann, at a time when no other bidder had such access, and is that a proper and ethical process?

Now Tony must be kidding again. Surely no CEO would actually let the party planning to put in a bid for the tender, rewrite the tender document to better suit them.

Hon Tony Ryall: Is he aware that the final document that went out to all tenderers incorporated the changes proposed by Mr Hausmann, whose company was the eventual successful party, and does he think that all potential bidders were fairly treated equally in this process?

Maybe he isn’t kidding.

Hon Tony Ryall: I seek leave to table the emails and documents mentioned in my questions.

Leave granted.

Well if the e-mails have been tabled, I guess we can judge for ourselves if Tony was just making this up or these e-mails do actually show what is claimed.

But wait that isn’t all. In the next question, we learn that these harmless e-mails (move on move on nothing to see here – read the official report when we are happy with it) may not quite have been voluntarily handed over the the inquiry team:

Hon Tony Ryall: Is the Minister aware that the material revealing secret emails between Hausmann and the executive, in which Hausmann changed the tender documents to his advantage, was withheld from the inquiry by both parties and came to light only after independent forensic analysis in London of the back-up tapes; and what does that say about the balance of truth in this inquiry?

Now this must be incorrect. Surely a DHB with obligations under the Official Information Act wouldn’t simply delete embarrassing e-mails.

Hon Tony Ryall: Would the Minister have confidence in the chief executive of the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board if it was confirmed to him that this information was withheld and came to light only because of specialised forensic analysis in Britain of the back-up tapes, which were mysteriously damaged?

The back-up tapes were damaged? What an unfortunate coincidence. Please do not connect the dots. The dots have nothing to do with each other.