Former health board chairman was on both sides

THE secret is out ? double agent M, aka former Wairarapa District Health Board chairman Doug Matheson, was on both sides when Wairarapa was fighting to keep its hospital in 1992.
Mr Matheson and wife Marion are now on their way to Dunedin and yesterday, surrounded by the paraphernalia of shifting house and during a chat about his lengthy career in governance, he confessed he and Mrs Matheson had been two of the hundreds of links in the human chain of the "hands-around-the-hospital" protest.
"At the time I had been appointed by the Government to head the committee which was to break up the Wellington Hospital Board into three parts," he said.
From the Wellington board, Wairarapa, Lower Hutt and Capital Coast health boards were created and he was then appointed as deputy commissioner for the transition period.
Mr Matheson laughed when he recalled how he and his wife had gone to the hospital protest not daring to tell anyone how very involved he was in the opposing role.
"Nobody knew, we didn't tell a soul that I was also on the other side, but we really wanted to save the hospital, and the fact that Wairarapa had a hospital was one of the reasons we came here."
Mr Matheson retired in 1991 after a 31-year, globetrotting career in IBM, and the couple arrived in Wairarapa to live on and work a small farm in Westbush Road in Masterton.
He was still involved with various boards in Wellington and had been elected chairman of the Wairarapa Electricity Board while living in Lower Hutt.
"My wife wanted the lifestyle and the plan was for her to breed her stud sheep while "I was the farmhand in between my involvement with governance".
Put simply, governance is the act of affecting government and monitoring, through policy, the long-term strategy and direction of an organisation using the traditions, institutions and processes that determine how power is exercised, and how decisions are made on issues of public concern.
Mr Matheson's role in a changing health system continued ? "happily Masterton Hospital was secure" ? hospital boards became crown health enterprises and in 1994 the Government appointed him chairman of the Wairarapa crown health enterprise, which later became part of Hospital Health Services, then the Wairarapa District Health Board.
During every transition and every change there was chairman Doug Matheson until last November when he resigned from the position.
He said the Wairarapa years have been "full and fun and the region has been good to me and out of a lot of firsts, the new hospital must be the big thing ? a great success, especially so since there had been serious consideration given to its down-grading".
He said he is sorry in some ways to be leaving Wairarapa, but he had not put down roots after so many years of living and working around the world in cities such as London, Hong Kong and Rome.
"When you live and travel like that there's really no allegiance to any place."
He began his career in governance in 1987 when he was asked to join a board, and these days he's still very involved teaching applied governance in Auckland and Wellington.
In 2004 his 570-page book ? The Complete Guide to Good Governance ? was published. It's been reprinted three times and is now a prescribed text in university MBA courses.
Being retired in the truest sense of the word has not happened and is unlikely to in the foreseeable future.
He will continue to commute to Wellington and Auckland to teaching assignments and it's also back to Wairarapa for the "next couple of months", where he'll stay on as chairman of GO Wairarapa until the Wellington Regional Strategy is put in place.
"There's also the Cuisine School to get up and running so there are rather a lot of things still on the boil.
"Now that we've been tossed out of home, we'll have a leisurely trip to Dunedin and be there by Saturday with the furniture trucks arriving Monday.
He said the decision to make Dunedin the city of choice was based around an appeal for the South Island ? he wanted to live in a university city and Mrs Matheson was very keen on Dunedin. "But I'm not retiring. I want to do a lot of research on governance and I might even write another book."