Aussie Malcolm: Migrants healthier than the rest of us

The annual district health board-sponsored "Let's kick a migrant" festival is under way again, this time kicked off by Waitemata's Dwayne Crombie, with National's Health spokesperson Tony Ryall in support.

I'm sorry to be a damp squib, but there are some facts that need to be addressed.

Every year the three Auckland district health boards get about $3 billion of taxpayers' money. Every year some visitors (not migrants) turn up sick at Auckland public health facilities.

They are not turned away by doctors and nurses, and neither should they be. They get sent a bill, and most pay. Some don't.

As a businessman, I don't like bad debts, but they are a fact of life. The DHBs' debt to turnover ratio of just over one-tenth of 1 per cent is not bad, and it is nothing to do with migrants; it is to do with tourists.

Immigration New Zealand is not to blame for this. They impose a health standard on every intending migrant that is higher than is imposed on a 747 pilot.

Each year, intending migrants pay about $10 million in medical and laboratory fees proving to New Zealand how healthy they are, before we let them in.

Sometimes a visitor, particularly from the Pacific, will fall seriously ill while visiting family in New Zealand. The family, Immigration New Zealand, the Immigration Minister and Auckland doctors are then confronted with this awful dilemma: "Grandma is going to die a slow and terrible death unless she is treated, immediately; the treatment is not available in her home country; so, do we kill her by refusing treatment and kicking her out, or do we make an exception to immigration policy and keep her alive by making her a New Zealander?"

In the majority of cases, Immigration New Zealand and the minister do the hard thing, and kill Grandma.

Just occasionally the circumstances are such that Kiwi compassion comes to the fore, an exception is made and Grandma becomes a New Zealander.

It is those exceptions that seem to bug Mr Crombie, but he fails to recognise that at that point the patient is no longer a visitor, but a New Zealander; is funded by the taxpayer like every other New Zealander; and cannot be differentiated by a hospital administrator, unless that administrator is absorbed by issues to do with patients' ethnicity and date of residency, which I, for one, find highly offensive.

Properly analysed, the issues give a different perspective from the original story.

The facts are that migrants, as a group, are far healthier than the New Zealand population, as a group.

Immigration New Zealand imposes and enforces very high health standards on migrants and does a good job of protecting our interests.

Sometimes a visiting tourist (not a migrant) fails to pay a health bill, rather less often, I suspect, than motel or rental car bills.

Very occasionally, Immigration New Zealand or the minister show some Kiwi compassion, but when they do so, the person concerned becomes a New Zealander, just like the rest of us.

In the face of the facts, there is no reason for Immigration New Zealand or the minister to be on the back foot over Messrs Crombie and Ryall's bleating.

But the bleating shows what a mean spirit drives our health management these days.

For bad debts of one-tenth of 1 per cent of turnover, a ratio any real-world businessman would just harden up and accept, Mr Crombie launches an irrational crusade against what he calls "migrants", failing to differentiate between tourists on the one hand, and overseas-born New Zealanders on the other, while taking cheap shots against the Immigration Service.

Mr Crombie is obviously intelligent; he knows or can find out the facts, and has the ability to work out the subtleties of the argument.

What, then, is his motivation in launching a political-style attack against an innocent minority of New Zealanders, that seems to be designed to panic the public at large into a xenophobic belief that "Our health system is under attack by sick foreigners"?

If it is to get more money out of the government, he should not make irrational use of migrants to achieve his political objective. We have had enough of that behaviour, in recent years, thank you.

But here is an irony; Mr Crombie has announced he is leaving the public sector to join private aged-care provider, Guardian Healthcare.

Over there, he will find his ability to make profits is totally reliant on migrant labour.

* Aussie Malcolm is a former Minister of Health and Minister of Immigration in a National Government.