Rob Campbell: Health NZ Chair contractor and consultant spending cuts

Health NZ will cut $204 million of contractor and consultant spending, making up for more than half of the Government's target of $400m. 

The public health agency has been using contractors to fill vacant roles. 

Why is Health NZ not employing full time staff? 

Health NZ Chair Rob Campbell joins Early Edition. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We got news today that nearly half of the government's
contractors and consultancy spending cuts that we were harping on
about last week will be coming from Health New Zealand alone.
So that is about two hundred and four million dollars
spent on contractors, consultants and locals. And it's raised the
question why aren't we spending that employing full time staff

(00:20):
and why do we end out spending so much money
on consultants and health in the first place. So former
Health New Zealand chair Rob Campbell joins in, Now, Hello Rob,
So why do we have so many contractors and consultants
and Health?

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Well, there was a degree of what I call learned
helplessness in the management structures of Health and of some
other parts of the public service, which developed over the years,
partly my people harping on about the private sect always
being best about things, but also partly just a crisis
of confidence in the amount of money that was coming

(00:55):
into Health and the difficulty they were having of finding
answers to get a better outcome. So over time and
agree with what again, learned helplessness developed. It's most unfortunately,
it's good to see and that it is being reversed.
If that's what this tells us. So I have no

(01:15):
doubt that there was a lot of room to improve
costs there and get those cost re erecor towards the
frontline of health. But not all most caught, and not
all consultants are the same. You look consultants and contractors together.
That combines both big consultancy company charging millions and millions
of dollars to do stuff at the public service should

(01:38):
and is able to do itself with individual contractors, particularly
it in places like that where that has simply become
the way that people work. So I don't think it's
helpful to lump those numbers to get on. It's helpful
to the politicians who are claiming to have made savings,
but whether it's really made the right savings in the
right places will only time will tell.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Thing with all this learned helplessness and what a beautiful
phrase that is, rob if we cut all that out,
can health survive?

Speaker 2 (02:08):
Look, it's only a very small part of health surviving
actually the cost part of it and the redirection of
those costs as part of it. But you know, you
could cut out a whole lot of costs that were
vital to health, and from outside in the reporting that
we get, it's really impossible to tell. I think it's
a mixture. I think some things that were clearly wasteful

(02:29):
have been chopped. I think that, particularly in the IT area,
some contractors and other advisors who have been cut are
not a particularly good idea at all. But you know,
you've got to start somewhere, and generally it's progress.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
And if we cut the learned helplessness, could that money
that we save actually end up being prioritized for full
time stuff and so there was no overall net saving.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
It could mean there's no overall net saving. I think
that's the right way to be thinking about this. What
we want is a bit of health service. So what
we're whether there's a saving or not, it's not really
the point. It's really whether that money is being redirected
more purposefully than it was in the past. And as
I say, it's very hard to tell from outside whether

(03:15):
that is true or not. Some of the results suggest
that it's not. I'm concerned that with a very narrow
range of priorities being pushed on to front aura, it
may well be that they're concentrating on those specific targets
rather than do overall improvement in the machine, and that
is the thing that we really need. Rob.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
Thank you for once again waking up early for us
as Rob Campbell, former Chair of Health New Zealand. For more,
fam Earlily Edition with Ryan Bridge.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
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