Ashley Bloomfield called the chasm between Cabinet and the ministry "dissonance". Chris Hipkins called it "frustrating" and "disappointing". Photo / Mark Mitchell
Ashley Bloomfield called the chasm between Cabinet and the ministry "dissonance". Chris Hipkins called it "frustrating" and "disappointing". Photo / Mark Mitchell
Opinion by Derek Cheng
Derek Cheng is a Multimedia Journalist for New Zealand’s Herald. He values holding those in power to account and shining a light on issues kept in the dark.
Why is the Ministry of Health so poor at doing what it's told, and how can this be fixed?
This is the crux of the independent report by Heather Simpson and Sir Brian Roche, who were brought in to babysit the ministry when the testing at the borderwasn't being done properly.
The report and its recommendations are yet to be released, even though a draft was sent to the Government two and a half months ago.
Director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield called it "dissonance".
There is plenty the ministry has got right, and our Covid-free communities are a testament to this.
But it is also not the first time there has been such frustrating dissonance.
From June 9, no one was meant to leave managed isolation until they had tested negative, and they were meant to be tested on day 3 and day 12.
Then two sisters, who later tested positive, were allowed to leave early on compassionate grounds without a test.
It took a further week for the ministry to tell us how many other people - 53, it turned out - had been able to leave MIQ early without a test result, while hundreds of others had completed their 14-day stay but had only been offered a test.
You would think these would have been quick and simple answers to very pressing questions in the circumstances.
But the health system has become such a fractured consortium of different appendages and blurry accountability that getting basic information was apparently next to impossible.
Running a national pandemic response to an immediate threat was not ideal when the country's 12 public health units were all essentially blind to each other, all running different information systems - some even paper-based.
How they talked to the ministry, to the 20 DHBs, and to each other was all unclear.
This was a problem the ministry had to overcome in a hurry. And it did, but it took an independent review - by now-Cabinet Minister Ayesha Verrall - to push those changes into urgency.
It took the sisters' road trip and an uproar - from Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, even - for the ministry to implement the pre-departure MIQ test that should have already been in place.
For months, the ministry told the Government regular testing at the border was being rolled out. When the August cluster hit, the implementation challenges were suddenly more easily overcome.
It appears in these cases, then, that the ministry is the challenge.
Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins says he hopes to release the report by Heather Simpson and Sir Brian Roche before Christmas. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The Simpson-Roche report includes recommendations to harmonise the dissonance, but the report's release is hardly setting speed records.
It landed on Hipkins' desk at the end of August, but he revealed in early November Bloomfield hadn't seen it yet.
The ministry also took exception to the findings, and there has been a lot of back and forth for the past two months.
But Simpson and Roche are no pushovers, and it can hardly be said that Simpson is out of her depth; her health system review, in which she described it as a fragmented mess, is now the driver of the Government's upcoming changes to the DHB system.
Labour's 2020 election promise for a national Public Health Agency further underlines how unfit-for-purpose it thinks the current system is to handle a national pandemic.
And Hipkins has already talked about streamlining the response, which remains a mesh of agencies including the Health Ministry, the Defence Force, and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.
The report will be released - hopefully before Christmas - after the Government decides how to respond to its recommendations.
It may not seem important, given our Covid-free status.
The people let out of MIQ without being tested didn't pass the virus into the community.
Testing at the border, if it had been in place, might not have minimised the August cluster.
But it could have been a different story.
Getting it right means we don't have to take those chances.
