The many failures of Chai Chuah
Chai Chuah was right to quit as chief executive of the Ministry of Health. He clearly did not have the confidence of the new minister of health, Labour’s David Clark.
Ministers must have this confidence if they are to work together effectively with their officials. In this case the public health system, a vast and expensive part of the state and the ultimate guarantee of the citizens’ health, requires a functioning partnership at the top.
The resignation follows Clark’s blistering attack while in Opposition on Chuah for some very serious performance failures. The worst of these was the ministry’s botching of the allocation of Budget money to the DHBs earlier this year. Some $38 million was wrongly earmarked, and 14 District Health Boards received too much.
Chuah also appears to have compounded the error by ignoring the advice of his then-minister, National’s Jonathan Coleman, and telling the DHBs that they would still get the money that had been wrongly pledged. There was also obvious trouble between the ministry and Treasury, who were reportedly furious that the health officials were not prepared to ‘‘own’’ their mistake.
In any case the ministry soon reversed itself and withdrew the offer to let the DHBs keep the money.
Labour launched such an intense attack on Chuah over all this that State Services Commission head Peter Hughes protested, asking the party to stop the personal attacks and direct any criticism at him, as Chuah’s employer.
In this Hughes was arguably doing his job, which is to defend the public service. But his suggestion was also unrealistic and clearly unworkable.
Officials have to be accountable for what they do. This was not, after all, a case of an official doing the bidding of his political master. In that case, Labour would have been wrong to attack Chuah and instead should have directed its fire at Coleman. In any event, David Clark had good reason when he became minister for having serious doubts about his top ministerial adviser. This was not, after all, the first time that the ministry had made serious mistakes on Chuah’s watch.
In 2016, the ministry had to ask for an extra $18m from the government after it botched its estimate of the cost of refurbishing its head office. This was another highly embarrassing error.
Chuah has acted honourably in choosing to resign. He must have known that the new minister could not work effectively with him. In that case it was almost inevitable that the State Services Commission would have shifted him to another post.
Chuah had, after all, also accepted the blame for the budget foul-up and in August accepted the recommendations from an independent report into it. That meant he was left high and dry if there was a change of government.