Public service for private gain

National MP Jonathan Coleman is quitting politics. Good riddance. But what's concerning is that having spent three years ruining the public health system as Minister of Health, he's gone straight to work for a private healthcare provider which exists because of his party's continuous vandalism. Most charitably, he's seeking to use the knowledge gained in public service for private gain. But bluntly, it looks like a payoff, a reward for boosting their business by making the public health system suck. And neither is acceptable. Again, we need legislation to stop this revolving door and to limit post-career conflicts of interest by politicians. We already prohibit former Immigration Ministers from working in the immigration sector for 12 months. Its time we did that to other Ministers as well.

Coleman's plan for health savings: sell hospitals

Our health system is systematically under-funded. Canterbury DHB has responded to this in the way that DHB's traditionally have, by providing essential services and running a deficit. But the government wants them to stop, and instead make cuts. But don't worry, says Jonathan Coleman, it won't come from services:

In emails released yesterday, the board discussed what it said was a Ministry of Health demand for its deficit to be slashed to $17 million, down from its current estimate of almost $54m. The ministry has asked that the following year, it reduce its deficit to zero.

The DHB's former acting chair, Sir Mark Solomon, told RNZ that reducing spending on that scale would mean significant service cuts of unprecedented size.

He said it would equate to the cost of 750 nurses or 256 senior doctors, although Sir Mark emphasised those options were not being considered.

But Dr Coleman told Morning Report today that he could guarantee there was "no way" frontline services would be cut.

So where's it going to come from then? After decades of cuts, its not as if DHBs have thousands of pointless back-office staff they can cut. These people do jobs, and those jobs matter. Things like making sure everyone gets paid. Or making sure the wards are clean. Or ensuring there's enough cancer drugs for everyone who is scheduled to get chemotherapy. Or scheduling the appointments for all those hip replacements Coleman regards as the sole determinant of DHB output. Or is Coleman suggesting they sell their hospitals instead?

Oh, actually he is:

He said savings could be made by leasing facilities instead of owning them

Which is just a scam: you end up with a big capital injection (which the government steals for tax cuts), but paying more (which means providing fewer services) in the long-term. But Coleman clearly doesn't care about the long-term: he's probably opted out of the public health system by having private health insurance. And so he sees free public healthcare as a cost, rather than an enormous benefit which enables kiwis to get on with their our without fear of being completely fucked if we get sick.

(See also National's plans to redevelop Dunedin hospital using a public-private partnership: it saves in the short-term, but costs more in the long run. Another scam designed to make the books look good).

We deserve better than National's scams and accounting tricks. We deserve a health system that is properly funded to deliver the services we need. And we won't get that under National.

Utterly predictable

One of the first things National did after being elected was implement targets for A&E waiting times. Seven years later, and it turns out that hospitals have been faking their waiting-time data:

Health Minister Jonathan Coleman has ordered an investigation into alleged "manipulation" of data at district health boards to comply with the six-hour emergency department target.

The first study on this since the six-hour target was introduced in 2009 was presented at a Queenstown conference today by Dr Peter Jones, an emergency medicine specialist and Auckland University researcher.

He said he had found evidence that the data had been manipulated to meet the target.

Opposition politicians have long suspected this, especially after widespread manipulation was uncovered in the UK to comply with its tighter, four-hour target. The UK's policy, unlike in New Zealand, came with incentives and penalties.

This is utterly predictable, and we've seen it everywhere such targets have been tried. When the incentives are strong enough, and its easier to fake data than meet the target, then that's exactly what institutions will do (see also: Serco). We're fortunate here that it doesn't seem to have negatively affected people's care, but that's all it is: good fortune. In reality, what this has done is shifted resources from elsewhere in the health sector to meeting National's targets - and who knows what else is being neglected as a result?

The key problem in the health system isn't slack doctors letting A&E patients suffer because they're on their tea-break - it is under-resourcing. Maybe we should fix that? But I forget: to National, having enough doctors and nurses to deal with actual demand (let alone letting them work sane hours rather than endangering patient safety with endless 14-hour days) is "waste". Better to have mickey mouse targets that everybody lies about instead.

Coleman lied about Dotcom

Last week, in response to the revelation that the SIS had initially recommended that Kim Dotcom not be granted residency due to an FBI investigation, then-Immigration Minister Jonathan Coleman denied all knowledge. He hadn't been told, he said. He "had absolutely no knowledge of any pending FBI-NZ Police investigation".

He lied:

Government minister Jonathan Coleman knew the FBI was interested in Kim Dotcom before his officials granted the tycoon residency - a revelation which has led to accusations he misled the public.

The accusation comes after Immigration NZ released a statement making it clear they told Dr Coleman about the FBI the day before the criticial residency decision was made.

[...]

[Intelligence Manager Theo] Kuper didn't give the classified briefing to the Immigration NZ officer making the decision but told him of FBI interest in Dotcom because of his Megaupload ownership, the spokesman said.

"This information formed the briefing to the head of Immigration New Zealand, Nigel Bickle, and in turn Mr Bickle's briefing to the then Minister of Immigration, Jonathan Coleman, on 28 October 2010 to tell him under the no surprises policy that residence had been approved in principle."

Back in 2004, then Immigration Minister Lianne Dalziel was sacked for misleading the public in this way. John Key promised us "a higher standard of government"; Coleman should therefore suffer the same fate.

"Political pressure"

The Herald's David Fisher has a scoop this morning: OIA documents with an explicit acknowledgement that "political pressure" played a role in the decision to grant Kim Dotcom permanent residency:

On October 22 [2010], one SIS agent wrote to another saying: "INZ [Immigration NZ] has phoned me to advise that the INZ CEO [Nigel Bickle] is questioning why this case is on hold. Apparently there is some 'political pressure' to process this case."

The agent noted the need for the "CEO" to be briefed on the Dotcom case. The SIS director at the time was Dr Warren Tucker, who reports directly to Prime Minister John Key.

One hour and 27 minutes later, another SIS agent said the agency's block would be lifted, writing: "Since Dotcom is not of security concern, there is no reason for this application to be on hold with us. Please can you inform your INZ contacts of this, also noting Dotcom is the subject of a criminal investigation and that they need to discuss the case with NZ Police before they proceed with granting him PR [permanent residency]."

So, wave the Minister, and SIS interest disappears. And despite being briefed on this material, Jonathan Coleman let him in anyway (though he didn't sign the papers himself, instead apparently ordering imigration staff to do it in order to keep his hands clean). This raises all sorts of questions about political interference in immigration decisions, and people are rightly asking them (though it does have a Simpsons-esque element of absurdity about it: "Jonathan Coleman let Kim Dotcom into the country, against SIS advice. Vote Kim Dotcom's people into parliament!").

It also raises further questions about what John Key knew and when. He has claimed to be ignorant of Kim Dotcom - the multimillionaire potential donor living in the enormous mansion in his electorate - until the unlawful raids. But there are explicit references to the need to brief the SIS director, and its unthinkable that he would not in turn have briefed Key. But because whatever went on is hidden under a cloak of secrecy, Key gets to keep lying to the public, enabled by his spies.

Ministerial expenses

So, right after the failure of the Meridian share offer, the government has dumped its Ministerial expenses. Highlights:

• Maurice Williamson's [p 9] $137.50 three-course dinner for one in Dunedin, including a full bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. I guess it just gets lonely down there...
  
• John Key [p 13] spent $110 on very expensive skin-care products, tagged as "NZ skin care for protocol officer". Was it a gift? Because if it wasn't, it seems extravagant. Not to mention odd.
  
• Jonathan Coleman's [p 9] $1500 a night stay at the Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore (his private secretary was exiled to the servant's quarters at a mere $500 a night). I expect Ministers to stay somewhere reasonable when they travel, but this is simply insane; even the Prime Minister only gets a $500 / night room when he travels. There's also the $93 lunch bill, which doesn't include his minion because they billed for two lunches of their own on the same day.
  
• Murray McCully's boozing. ~$50 on "room service wine" in Cairo. A dinner in Singapore (itemised on his hotel bill) which spent ~NZ$165 on food and ~NZ$135 on beverages. A ~NZ$400 diner in PNG with another ~NZ$280 on booze (classified as "accommodation and meals for MFA and 2 P/S"). A similar pattern in Port Vila, with ~NZ$150 on food, and ~NZ$120 on booze. I don't begrudge a Minister a glas sof wine with their meal, but when its that proprortion of a large dinner bill, it looks like a habit. He's also in the luxury hotel scam, paying ~NZ$1250 for a night in the Grand Papua in Port Moresby.
  
• And then there's Tim Groser. What we have from him is bad enough - foie gras on the taxpayer (so he's the Minister of Animal Cruelty), obviously different minibar expenses hand-labelled "mineral water", and Heinekin with everything. But it's what we don't have that's interesting. Oddly, every time Minister Groser has an expensive meal somewhere, he loses the detailed receipt, and only keeps the till receipt with the costs (which are inevitably over NZ$100 a head). He also misreports trips to posh Parisian restaurants where he spends hundreds of Euro of taxpayers money as "refreshments". No, Tim - "refreshments" is when you go to Starbucks, or buy a coke, or even buy green olives, hummus and (of course) a Heinekin for (presumably) a snacky lunch in the sun. When you spend 250 Euro at a sit-down place at 10pm, its called a "meal", and you give us a fucking full receipt so we can see whether we are getting value for our money, or whether you're just having a giant piss-up at our expense.
  

This is how National spends your money. You can judge at the ballot box whether its a good investment.

Slumlord MPs

Just last week, John Key was calling for New Zealand's landlords to up their game, and threatening to regulate if they didn't insulate their damp, cold, musty houses. But it turns out that his MPs are part of the problem. The Herald did some digging into National MPs who declared that they owned rental properties, and found that, yes, they were renting out cold, damp, uninsulated homes:

Tenants of three Government MPs live in cold, damp homes where the insulation is inadequate or non-existent.

Defence Minister Jonathan Coleman, who lives in a $1.74 million waterfront house on Auckland's Northcote Point, is owner or trustee of two small rental properties.

In one, in Summer St, Ponsonby, one of the tenants said the house was cold in winter and she thought it had made her sick. An insulation inspector said it had some ceiling insulation but nothing underfloor.

In another, in Dominion St, Takapuna, pregnant mum Rebekah Brittin said she was worried for the health of her three-year-old son and her baby, due in summer.

The Herald also cites Cam Calder and Jian Yang as renting out uninsulated properties - the latter has asked his tenants to get a Community Services Card so he can get a subsidised insulation upgrade. I guess that $140,000 a year backbencher's salary just doesn't go far enough...

Coleman meanwhile is desperately trying to pretend that he has nothing to do with his slum rentals, and has even told the Herald he's selling one. Hopefully they'll check back to see if that's real, or like Phil Goff's promise to sell the Wellington apartment he was renting to Labour backbenchers: simply an attempt to sterilise the issue.

As for the policy of requiring landlords to insulate, it shows what we're up against. As with tax cuts for the rich, MP's personally profit from poor standards, and have a conflict of interest on any attempt to improve them. Sadly, in internal party policy debates which precede legislation being brought to the House, the conflict is likely to go undeclared and unrecognised.

National to run on social division II

And while we're on the subject, another example of National's election strategy of running on social division, othering people at the bottom and whipping up hate for votes: their plans to introduce new asylum-seeker laws:

The Government is considering whether new laws are needed to discourage asylum seekers from arriving on New Zealand shores.

Immigration Minister Jonathan Coleman yesterday said the Government was looking at all options to combat illegal immigration, including legislation.

The subtext: "refugees are evil, and National is going to do something about them". Again, pick a group, other them, demonise them, and promise decent white volk that you will keep them safe from this dreadful menace. Its simply whipping up hate and fear for votes. And its a great distraction for your lack of an economic plan.

Meanwhile, the facts about refugees - that (thanks to checks barring them from ever getting on a plane) we do not receive many claimants, that only a third are successful, and that those we accept go on to become valuable members of New Zealand society are overlooked. As is the fact that we have obligations under international law to accept refugees and process claims fairly. Or indeed the fact that our anti-people-smuggling law is already far tougher than that proposed in Australia. But hey, there's hate to whip up, and votes to win. National wouldn't want mere things like facts to get in the way of that, would they?

The money was just resting in her account...

Three News had a scoop tonight on an NZ On Air investigation of National MP finding that she had misused taxpayer's money. A $100,000 contingency fund from NZOA was not spent but was not returned, instead being spent within the company. Lee's explanation?

“We didn’t have enough money so we transferred our profit margin across to cover contingencies,” she said, in an effort to explain the problem.

“We then transferred the money back at the end of the year. Technically all unspent contingency is meant to be returned to NZ on Air.

“It’s an accounting error in my view, I’m waiting for the outcome.”

So the money was just resting in her account, and she always intended to pay it back. Really. And if you stick that on a billboard, you could use it to sell beer.

There are strict rules for government contracts, and Lee appears to have breached them - first by unauthorised overspending, then by treating the next year's funding as her personal piggy bank. Those rules exist for good reason, and violating them is a serious business. As for Jonathan Coleman, it turns out that there was a clear conflict of interest between his role as Minister of Broadcasting (in which he should have been demanding accountability from Lee) and his role as Lee's campaign manager (in which he was more interested in shuffling it all under the carpet to avoid even more humiliation). I think he has some pretty serious questions to answer as well. And hopefully we will get some answers from him tomorrow.

Subverting the OIA

A couple of months ago, the Herald reported that National MP Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi was suspected by the Immigration Service of paying off a woman at the centre of allegations he had made bogus job offers. The information - a report on the investigation from the Immigration Service - was obtained by the Herald under the Official Information Act. In response, Immigration Minister started a witch-hunt to find out why the information was released without his permission.

I was appalled by this outrageous attempt to limit OIA releases on political grounds, so I did some digging. Unfortunately, Immigration's parent body, the Department of Labour, would not release the report of Coleman's witch-hunt on a number of spurious grounds, including s6(c) (maintenance of the law) and s9(2)(e) (potential loss to the public, though given that no civil or criminal proceedings can be brought for a good-faith release under the Act, I am left wondering as to what that "loss" might be). They did, however, provide a summary [PDF], which listed the conclusions as:

The process followed was not as robust as it should have been. It was noted that there was:

• little consideration of the reputational risk in dealing with this OIA request;
• misinterpretation of the meaning of the legal advice received; and
• no management oversight of the material released.

(Emphasis added).

It goes on to recommend establishing "a process for triaging OIA requests" - i.e. identifying those which might be "politically sensitive" and ensuring that they are appropriately buried. A briefing for the Minister [PDF] expands on this:

Immigration NZ has recently put in place a further OIA triage process. This includes a panel to decide how and by which workgroup each OIA should be dealt with and to provide advice.

[...]

All OIA requests, including those received in regional offices, must be registered centrally in the Government, Executive and Ministerial Unit (GEMS).

GEMS will allocate all OIAs to the relevant 3rd tier manager.

GEMS will provide advice, assistance and monitor timelines.

(The briefing also contains an Orwellian note that the Herald reporter, Patrick Gower, has since lodged six further OIAs in the week leading up to the briefing. because obviously, the Minister needs to know that).

All of this is contrary to the spirit of the Act. As the Danks report noted way back in 1980,

The fact that the release of certain information may give rise to criticism or embarrassment of the government is not an adequate reason for withholding it from the public.

The Department's own updated OIA policy agrees with this, listing political sensitivity and the potential for Ministerial embarrassment as unacceptable reasons for withholding information. But the processes the Department has established seem to be aimed at withholding or denying information on those very grounds. And that is simply unacceptable.

Image-driven control freakery

Last month, the Herald revealed that National MP Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi was suspected by the Immigration Service of paying off a woman at the centre of allegations he had made bogus job offers. The information - a report on the investigation from the Immigration Service - was obtained by the Herald under the Official Information Act. Now Immigration Minister Dr Jonathan Coleman has started a witch-hunt to find out why the information was released without his permission.

This is absolutely outrageous. The department has applied the law, weighed the grounds for withholding information against the public interest, found that none of them applied, and released the information. Coleman wants to second-guess that, on explicitly political grounds: preventing information embarrassing to the government from coming to light. Worse, he expects this to be a permanent part of how OIA requests are handled by his department:

Dr Coleman yesterday said the internal inquiry was called because "that OIA didn't come through my office as every other OIA should".

This is expressly contrary to the spirit, intent and letter of the law. As the Danks Report pointed out way back in 1980,

The fact that the release of certain information may give rise to criticism or embarrassment of the government is not an adequate reason for withholding it from the public.

Unfortunately this sort of image-driven control-freakery over OIA requests is par for the course for this government. But that's what we have an ombudsman for.

No education for pregnant women

That's the upshot of Immigration Minister Jonathan Coleman's response to the vile and discriminatory treatment of pregnant Korean woman Sung Won Kim:

“Under New Zealand immigration policy, student permits are not granted to pregnant women as it places extra strain on the health system, both in terms of money and resources available to New Zealanders. Also, the express purpose of a student permit is to enable study.

...because obviously, people can't do that while they're pregnant, the evidence of countless women over numerous years notwithstanding.

This is a simply medieval attitude, more reminiscent of the Taleban than our supposedly modern, liberal democracy. And the Minister should be ashamed for making it. We would not tolerate this discriminatory policy in our workplace, and we should not tolerate it in our immigration system.

Speaks for itself

The National Party is sometimes parodied as a party of arrogant business wankers who treat the people around them peons. Unfortunately, some National MPs seem to be doing their very best to uphold that reputation...

But quite apart from confirming that Jonathan Coleman is a wanker, this also again raises the spectre of National's sponsorship by the tobacco industry. Coleman wasn't the only National MP there - chief whip and frontbencher Simon Power was also in attendance. And remember, British American Tobacco wouldn't be hosting them unless it thought they could (eventually) get something out of them. Given that Coleman is one of National's health spokespeople, you really have to wonder whose interests will be represented in National's health policy - those of ordinary New Zealanders, or of a company which profits by making them sick.