The Director-General of Health's review of conflicts of interest at Hawke's Bay DHB has been released, and it strongly criticises the board, both for its handling of conflicts of interest and its dysfunctional relationship with management. The report takes a wider view than just the allegations around Peter Hausmann, and finds a consistent systemic failure on the part of the Board to properly disclose and manage conflicts of interest. Hausmann is treating this as a vindication, but I wouldn't say so. Instead, both he and his fellow Board members failed to live up to the standard we expect from those in positions of public trust. They displayed consistently bad judgement, and failed to establish or adhere to even minimal standards around such conflicts. If that's "vindication", it's setting the bar pretty damn low.
The report blames this failure on a lack of guidance from the DHB, but the Ministry of Health should be carrying part of the blame here. Given the small size of our health community and the limited pool from which DHB candidates are drawn, such conflicts are inevitable, so you'd expect some robust guidance from central government on what to do about them. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be any. If we want to stop this sort of thing from happening again, we need to do more than just leave it to DHBs and hope they will muddle through. And OTOH, how hard can it be? The appropriate policy is obvious the moment you stop to think about it: if there's the slightest hint of a conflict, disclose it and withdraw from any relevant decision-making. It's not rocket science, its not sainthood, its just basic common sense. If elected representatives think that's too much to expect, they should be looking for another job.
In light of this, it seems that David Cunliffe's decision to sack the Board and appoint a Commissioner was entirely justified - and the report notes that it would have recommended the appointment of a Crown Monitor to supervise if the Board hadn't been sacked already. With what I've read, I'm very glad the Minister beat them to it.
The full report and recommendations can be found here [PDF].
