Beware fallout as decommissioned health minister falls back to Earth

SATIRE: Decommissioned former cabinet minister Jonathan Coleman has fallen back to Earth, crashing and burning after a three-year-long mission orbiting high above an increasinglystrained public health system.

As he streaked across the political firmament Dr Coleman left a long and now brightly-lit trail of rotting hospital buildings, stressed and overpaid staff and the million-dollar cost of a byelection behind him.

Patients in public hospitals in a wide arc from Kaitaia to Invercargill are warned to be on the lookout for continued fall-out and debris from Dr Coleman’s orbit for the foreseeable future.

Launched into health-ministerial orbit in 2014, Dr Coleman’s core mission involved looking down on DHB’s as well as pinpoint surveillance of their budgets, providing a vital early warning against rogue deficits.

This was part of a wider series of experiments in conjunction with other orbiting cabinet ministers to determine how far core public services could be underfunded, thus projecting a protective shield of book-balanced good economic management over the Beehive.

Over the course of his mission, communications with Dr Coleman proved to be increasingly difficult, with terrestrial news organisations receiving only intermittent and patchy reception when requesting interviews.

Dr Coleman was decommissioned and shut down after the 2017 election, but remained in a deteriorating orbit as bit by bit revelations about the state of public health infrastructure and staff discontent continued to break away and blaze across newspaper headlines.

Earlier this year an attempt was made to lift Dr Coleman into a higher orbit, this time as National Party leader. But at a critical time his main boosters failed to fire, leaving him drifting aimlessly and soon overtaken by ‘‘next-generational’’ young thrusters.

In recent days new mission chief Simon Bridges had attempted to avoid a hard landing by Dr Coleman. Bridges deployed explanations to the effect that although Dr Coleman was equipped to detect a DHB deficit from a distance of several hundred kilometres, he was not equipped to detect hospital infrastructure so decrepit there was raw sewage leaking and mould growing in the walls.

Pressed on why Dr Coleman did not have the onboard systems needed to

Back on Earth, staff at Middlemore Hospital described Dr Coleman’s condition as satisfactory. ‘‘Bloody satisfactory,’’ added one.

detect such things seeing as, you know, he was the boss and in charge of everything at the time, Bridges would say only ‘‘Look at that shiny thing over there! Is that a meteor?!’’

In the end, Bridges was left hoping merely that Dr Coleman’s descent would occur in a sparsely-populated part of the news cycle, so that as few people as possible heard about it.

Back on Earth, staff at Middlemore Hospital described Dr Coleman’s condition as satisfactory. ‘‘Bloody satisfactory,’’ added one. UPDATE: In breaking news, reports suggest Dr Coleman did not crash and burn after all but has in fact made a soft landing in a well-cushioned private health sector job. A spokesperson described the new appointment as ‘‘the sort of positive health outcome Dr Coleman will be remembered for’’.