Clark: No politics in DHB appointments
The Health Minister expects there to be more turnover of District Health Board chairs but disputes the appointments are political.
On Sunday David Clark announced three new board chairs for Auckland DHBs – Pat Snedden will lead Auckland DHB from June 1, Judy McGregor at Waitemata DHB from June 10 and Vui Mark Gosche at Counties-Manukau DHB from Thursday.
At least two of the appointments appear to be politically motivated with Gosche coming into the role having previously been a Minister under the former Labour-led Government.
But Clark says all the DHB appointments have to be ‘‘skillsbased’’ because these are significant businesses with turnovers of more than $1 billion.
‘‘One of the issues that has been brought to me by the chairs is the importance of having skillsbased appointments and on some boards the challenges of working with elected members who don’t necessarily have all the skills they’d wish.’’
He said there was always going to be changes to appointed people in governance areas and health wasn’t an exception. ‘‘I expect DHB chairs to change from time-to-time, that is part of the role.’’
But when asked whether chairs would move on in the future because there had been a change of government, Clark was clear that wasn’t the motivation.
He said the relationship between the DHBs, the Government and the Ministry of Health could be better. In the case of Counties Manukau DHB (CMDHB) both the acting chairman and a board member, who were appointed under the previous Government, were moved on by Clark in recent weeks.
Rabin Rabindran and Mark Darrow both finish with CMDHB on Wednesday and Darrow says while he accepts some appointments are political, in this case Clark was pushing out the people who had put a spotlight on the problems, particularly at Middlemore Hospital.
National’s health spokesman Michael Woodhouse said business leaders had long called for appointments at that level not to be based on political alignment.
‘‘They do need high levels of business acumen on them – particularly at the top.’’
Woodhouse said Clark wasn’t being ‘‘fulsome’’ with his comments if he was suggesting political allegiances hadn’t driven the new DHB appointments. ‘‘It’s very clear these are political appointments – a former Cabinet Minister, a competent health service manager who was nevertheless very aligned with the Labour Party.’’