Mike Hosking: Paralysis by analysis - Government's health system report tell us nothing useful

COMMENT: We have an interim report into our health system - and guess what it says. It says what you thought it would say, hence you wonder why we need the report.

This, of course, is the Government of reports, they do nothing without a report, they have no opinions, they're not decisive, they lack vision, they love working groups.

It's why so little is getting done. Worse, this is an interim report - it merely points out all the stuff you knew was going wrong is going wrong. But they make no recommendations, that's for another report.

This report is led by Heather Simpson, Helen Clark's former officer of everything. Back really in the days when Labour had a leader on top of facts, figures, issues and policy. Say what you want about Helen Clark but she was on top of her brief.

Let me give you a few choice bits of the report:

• The healthcare system is fragmented

• It lacks leadership

• There is no coherent decision-making

• It questions the need for elected boards and lots of them

• There is inequality

It's 300 pages and so it goes. It tells us nothing, nothing we didn't already know.

Why do we need it? Why do we need more of it later this year? When we get it all later this year, how long will it take the mysterious and rarely seen Health Minister David Clark to actually do something with it?

And this ties in with the cancer announcement made on Sunday. It's getting rid of the postcode nature of cancer care and setting measurable targets.

Here's the joke: there are already measurable targets. And guess what? They're not being met. Almost half the DHBs aren't meeting them, so what's being done? Nothing.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who talks of new levers required for the sector (but doesn't and can't define what a lever is, what it would look like, or what it would do) then can't answer the simple question - what's the point of targets? Especially when they are not met and nothing happens.

What's the point of a new service that won't work? And you don't and can't do anything about when it doesn't? What's the point of a report into trouble we already know we have?

Honestly if this lot spent as much time doing stuff as they did procrastinating, meeting, yakking, talking, thought bubbling and commissioning reports and working groups, we might actually get stuff done.

They're taking basic problems and complicating them. They're giving people work at a grand a day to state the bleeding obvious.

This interim report is 300 pages of old material. It's a doorstop, not an answer.