Rob Campbell: Former Health NZ Chair on the agency overspending at a rate of $130m a month

Questions are being raised as to where the blame lies for issues within Health New Zealand. 

The board is being replaced with a commissioner as the agency was found to be overspending at the rate of around $130 million a month. 

Back office staff numbers have increased significantly in recent years. 

Former Health New Zealand Chair Rob Campbell told Mike Hosking there's a possibility the budget was never right from the start. 

He suspects the original budgeting appropriations were never adequate, and it's been impossible to manage. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Another big move from the government as they replace the
Health New Zealand Board with the Commission that there is
a massive budget blayer of about one hundred and thirty
million issue a month and the claims that their layers
of management so thick no one has a clue where
the money's going and what is being spent on. The
former Health New Zealand chair Rob Campbell's with us on
this Rob Morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Good morning, Mike.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
As I watched the Prime Minister yesterday, how much is
politics and how much real? Is there that much management?
Does nobody know what's going on? Is it that gargantuinely
a cockup?

Speaker 2 (00:28):
There's a lot of politics and it looked for our
problems and our health system moments getting anyone about that
and to fly to Aura. Hasn't been able to deal
with them as quickly as many people hope you can.
And we can go into the reasons for that. But
there's also a lot of politics in this most recent statement.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Okay, so did the board deserve to get sacked or not?

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Board has actually disappeared themselves, so there wasn't anyone left
to sack by the time they made this decision. Apart
from the ones they just appointed. So it's a bit
dramatic to say they sacked the board. The board mainly
left because they weren't happy with how it was going.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Were they not happy with how it was going? Because
it does seem weird that when you look at the
numbers they were forecasting, you know, at best some sort
of surplus, maybe about break even. Whops, all of a sudden,
it's one hundred and thirty million dollars a month. How
does that work?

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Well, that's certainly I can't understand that from outside. What
I would say is is when someone blows a budget,
there's a couple of possibilities. One is that there've been laxed.
The other is that the budget was never right for
the start, and I suspect that it's a mix of
both here. I suspect that the original budgeting and the
appropriations that were made were never properly adequate. We're never adequate,

(01:41):
and that therefore it's been almost impossible to manage to it.
And that comes back partly to the board, partly to management,
but significantly also to the ministry. The ministry, you've got
to remember, presided over the cockup that's our health system
for a long time. It wrote the new rules, very
much people from outside consultancies. It's presided over. It's still

(02:04):
the steward of the system. It gets all the information
that the board gets, and yet it wasn't calling out
anything about this. So I'm not saying the board has responsibility,
far from it. But the Ministry should not escape from this.
It's the ministry which is supposed to be stewarding the system.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
Okay, good insight, well done, appreciate it. Rob Campbell form
a chair because Luxeon was at pains yesterday to say,
it's not the money, this thirty billion dollars, we just
want quality spent.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
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Speaker 1 (02:34):
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