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Speaker 1: Ever, due for Zellen, the government has fired the Board

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Speaker 1: of Health New Zealand and replaced them with the Commissioner.

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Speaker 1: Health New Zealand is apparently currently overspending at a rate

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Speaker 1: of one hundred and thirty million dollars a month. The

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Speaker 1: Health Minister, doctor Shane reci is with us now, Hey Shane.

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Speaker 2: Yay, good afternoon.

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Speaker 1: Either what are they spending that money on.

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Speaker 2: A number of things? Well, first of all, that wasn't visible,

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Speaker 2: so the Order to General said there's no internal performance

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Speaker 2: monitoring framework, so no one was watching in the middle

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Speaker 2: of Health New Zealand as to where the money was going,

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Speaker 2: who was doing what, who was recruiting, who wasn't. There

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Speaker 2: was just no watching. When we start to peel it back,

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Speaker 2: which we've done over these past few months, and we're

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Speaker 2: made aware of it a number of areas, it's gone

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Speaker 2: into areas of recruitment, but not always in the areas

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Speaker 2: that we need them. I mean, we need nurses and maternity,

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Speaker 2: we need them in mental health, we need them in

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Speaker 2: critical care. That's not necessarily where the health workforce has gone.

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Speaker 2: There's been consumables and supplies that have blown out, there's

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Speaker 2: been issues around it around procurement. Just a number of

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Speaker 2: ears that have added up, and unfortunately without a monitoring framework,

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Speaker 2: how New zealandn't spot it until too late.

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Speaker 1: One of the things that blew my mind today was

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Speaker 1: you guys said that between the frontline staff and the CEO,

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Speaker 1: there are fourteen lines of management. Now that's an obvious

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Speaker 1: cost saving. There. Are you expecting people to be fired

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Speaker 1: to tidy that up?

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Speaker 2: Yes, what we know is that from twenty eighteen to now,

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Speaker 2: twenty five hundred back office administration and management staff have

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Speaker 2: been taken on board. Sometimes it's hard to understand exactly

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Speaker 2: what they've been doing. Furthermore, over that period of time,

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Speaker 2: and you couldn't mind if that was the case before

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Speaker 2: your productivity metrics had gone up, but in fact, nearly

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Speaker 2: every health metric has gone down. So yes, Professor Levy,

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Speaker 2: we'll be looking to optimize the back office workforce.

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Speaker 1: Marji Appa as chief executive has gone right.

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Speaker 2: Look, that's actually a decision. Previously it was for the

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Speaker 2: board and now it's for the commissioner. Our role is

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Speaker 2: to organize the governance. It's then actually the role of

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Speaker 2: the board or the commissioner to employ or to arrange

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Speaker 2: the executive's structure.

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Speaker 1: Shane, thank you very much, appreciate your time. Best of

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Speaker 1: luck with that, doctor Shane, the rit Health Minister. For

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