Are Lester Levy and Shane Reti “cooking the books?”

A recap of events

This news piece is important enough it serves as a recap of events:

In July, after most Health NZ Board members had already resigned – many without notice and it was starting to look embarrassing for the sitting Government - Shane Reti and Christopher Luxon held an extraordinary press conference to announce they were sacking the Health NZ Board and replacing it with Lester Levy, a part time IT Professor, private health companies Director, and man who has a history of wanting to run health as a business.

Their pretext was clear: They claimed Health NZ was heading towards a $1.6bn deficit, brought on by (you guessed it) the last government.

In the press conference that day, in July a journalist pointed out the deficit happened on National’s watch – so why were they blaming Labour?

“Will you take responsibility?” the journalist asked – but he probably didn’t know who he was talking to.

* mumbo jumbo* as Luxon and Reti looked solemn and Luxon’s stern nature thrust forward again. They parried the question, denying blame and threw out a series of excuses and reasons – primarily being “14 layers of management” and “botched merger” for the “unexpected deficit”.

• One, mergers inevitably take time to rationalise and this is standard practice.

• Two, this government has a history of lying – including about Health NZ

• Three, the NZ Tory Prime Minister admitted he knew about the “deficit” in November 2023 - but intentionally underfunded health anyway (still not sure why we didn’t see any journalists point this out),

• Four, Reti & Luxon later admitted there was nothing even close to 14 layers of management and it didn’t exist, but it was just another creative invention they no longer cared about.

But with the new Tory government in NZ taking a leaf out of the UK and Republicans, facts are no barrier when it comes to political messaging.

Throughout these months, Lester Levy has consistently been in the news raving about how the deficit is getting worse, and things are very, very dire financially.

Well this week it turns out the “deficit” was $722m – $1b less than one of their higher estimates - and half of what they used as an excuse to slash $2b from public health.

And most of the deficit was simply due to filling nursing roles, as Newsroom’s Marc Daalder reported months ago.

i.e. It looks very much like this government used a fake pretext to manufacture a crisis to give them an excuse to “fire” an almost non existent Board by then, put an amenable and ideology aligned Lester Levy solely in charge, and slash our public health investments and capacity to ready it for privatisation.

Worryingly, Lester Levy and Shane Reti have been alleged to “cook the books” as we’ve heard over the last days –

e.g. they attempted to move the current year’s restructuring (including firing) costs to last year – to make the former Government’s 2023/24 deficit year look worse – and Lester Levy & Reti’s 2024/25 year look better.

The Attorney General stopped it. But he only cottoned on after former CFO of the year and Health NZ scapegoat, Rosalie Hughes, advised the AG of Levy antics.

It strains belief that there are no repercussions for this conduct. I can’t imagine any private or public organisation where this is not a sackable – or even potentially criminal offence.

The media appears to have largely moved on – but the fact that this is not making top headlines and Reti and Levy are not being chased down the street (versus for example, Golriz Gharaman for stealing a few dresses) is a travesty on our existing political and media environment.

Kudos to Newsroom in particular, and RNZ, who continue to bring us impactful Health related news.

EXTRA - The Dire State of Public Health under National/ACT/NZ First

In case you missed it, Dr Norma Gray, the clinical head of the Emergency Department at Wairarapa Hospital spoke to RNZ last month after the government announced “new” funding for 50 doctors, which they simply siphoned from cutting investments elsewhere in Health NZ, and months and months after freezing key doctor and clinical hires and destabilising our workforce.

That move last month was called “moving deckchairs on the Titanic.”

Ian Powell summarised key points from Dr Gray:

• When ask whether the announcement [of “new” doctors] had given him hope, he replied not at all. Instead it left him despondent and despairing.

• The number of new senior doctor specialists was negligible.

• His hospital even now can’t recruit from overseas.

• The announcement was “delusional” with facts contradicting its fiction.

• Wairarapa Hospital is already short of around 20 senior doctor positions.

• The announcement was not even a drop in the bucket; instead it was a “spit in the ocean.”

• The intended bidding process was wrong; there should not be competition.

• Around one-third of locally trained doctors leave New Zealand because work conditions and remuneration are not comparable with overseas options. [Note: Australian specialist core salaries are at least over 60% higher]

• Commissioner Levy’s claim that this announcement would succeed because it was a “different approach” was “delusional”.

• His overall conclusion was that the announcement was an embarrassment for the government that would come back to bite it.