Health underfunding topic of Northland candidates debate

Independent candidate Marie Minhinnick speaks at Thursday night's Northern Advocate/Hits Northland election debate at Forum North. Photo / John Stone

Underfunding of Northland's health system by up to $30 million over the past three years was a hot topic at the latest Whangarei candidates debate.

The Northern Advocate/Hits Northland held its meet the Whangarei candidates event at Forum North on Thursday, attended by Ash Holwell for the Green Party; Shane Jones for NZ First; Chris Leitch for Democrats for Social Credit; Marie Minhinnick as an independent; Shane Reti for National and Tony Savage for Labour. Other candidates - Robin Grieve, Act, and Jim Taylor for the Conservative Party - were unable to attend.

This week an email from Northland District Health Board CEO Nick Chamberlain that had been sent to his 2500-plus staff revealed that the DHB was receiving $8.4m less than its share of population-based funding and almost $30m over the past three years because of a population cap.

The candidates were asked their views on the deficit and what they would do about it, if elected.

Mr Holwell said the health system had been grossly underfunded for years and this Government doesn't really focus on it. He said the Greens were always focused on providing a health system that provides proper care for everybody. ''And we'll continue to fight for that forever.''

Mr Jones said for the last nine years publicly funded health services have continued to deteriorate.
He said if voters wanted that to change they had to create some political leverage within Cabinet to force a change. To do that they needed him as their MP.

Mr Leitch said funding caps are all about having a reason to say they are not going to allocate the money. He said the Government spent nearly $30m on a flight of fancy that nobody wanted - the flag debate - but it could not find $30m for NDHB.
If the Government borrowed money from Kiwibank - which it owns - rather than sending the interest to Australian-owned banks, that money could be put into the health system.

Dr Reti, a former NDHB member, said the cap was put in place after the Christchurch earthquakes when people were leaving that region and moving elsewhere. A 5 per cent cap on the population growth formula was introduced by the Government, regardless of how much a population grew by. Northland had greater population growth than that.

Dr Reti said he learned of the shortfall a few months ago and had been working with health officials to rectify it and he would fight very hard for the DHB after the election.

Mr Savage said it was not just about the money and the underfunding was putting untold pressure on the DHB's staff and ''they are sick of it''.

He said the basic problem was that not enough money had been allocated to health, and the country needed to put more money into public health. Mr Savage said the underfunding was a strategy of the Government to privatise the health system.

Other topics under debate included euthanasia, superannuation and business questions from the Chamber of Commerce.

A straw poll conducted at Thursday's meeting was declared void. Northern Advocate editor Craig Cooper said attendees had been able to vote for a party and a candidate. However, the result was inconclusive.

"On many of the voting forms, we were unable to identify if it was a candidate vote and/or a party vote. We accept some of the blame - we could have made the voting process clearer," Mr Cooper said.

To watch the debate go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwRQq6beRBY&feature=youtu.be.