Heart defibrillator. Photo: 123rf
Although the next Budget is just over a month away, on 22 May, this week Parliament was still debating spending from the 2023/2024 financial year in the annual review debate.
Parliament carefully watches the cash it grants to governments, and its financial scrutiny cycle is lengthy and continuous. At any one time MPs could be debating future, current, or past spending. The 10-hour Annual Review Debate is the final hurdle for governments in gaining Parliament's approval for past spending.
This debate was delayed when the government shuffled cabinet and wanted to grant ministers time to get acquainted with their changed portfolios.
Details of that spending manifest in the House in the form of an Appropriation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill. The Annual Review Debate doubles as the Committee of the Whole House stage in the passing of that bill.
The scope of the debate is guided by the reports of select committees which have carried out annual reviews of departments, Officers of Parliament, Crown entities, public organisations, and state enterprises. The debate is organised portfolio-by-portfolio.
Before the political to-and-fro begins, led-off by the Minister or an Opposition Spokesperson; the Chair of the relevant select committee outlines their committee's annual review inquiries.
Speaker's ruling 147/3 states that "As Chairperson of the select committee, you are to report back to the committee according to the reports. [It is] to be a non-political report back to the committee from the select committee."
Health Committee chair Sam Ufindell, who chairs Health, began his speech with acclaim for what the government had done in the sector.
"This is a government focused on delivery-focused on delivery to the patients, making sure that we have got targets back in our health system. We're focused on faster cancer treatments, on increasing immunisation rates, on shorter emergency department wait times, faster first specialist appointments, and faster treatments."
The presiding officer, Greg O'Connor, interrupted Ufindell's speech twice to remind him to stay within the non-political prescribed parameters of his speech.
The annual review debate is a Committee stage, so any MP can make a speech or ask a question, with no limits on either. However, much of each portfolio debate tends to be between the Minister and their Opposition shadows. On Health this was a lengthy interchange between National's Simeon Brown and Labour's Ayesha Verrall (a former minister).
Verrall and Brown have had fiery exchanges during Question Time recently. But while Oral Questions has many rules, this debate is more free-form, allowing some political point-scoring before eventually asking, or answering, a question. As the first Opposition member to speak, Verrall opted for the 'soften-up first, ask questions later' approach.
She began by saying she was surprised neither Uffindell nor Brown had mentioned that "the financial reports that were public for Health New Zealand, were published only a day before the committee's hearing, and when they arrived: 'Oh boy, $300 million attributed to the wrong financial year'."
She added that "Health New Zealand had tried to pre-empt the costs of redundancies for jobs that hadn't even been cut to make it look like they were turning their books around. The Auditor-General was having none of it and made Health New Zealand revise its accounts. If that isn't cooking the books, I don't know what is."
Verrall eventually got to a question - whether the minister would commit to:
- monthly publication of papers and financial statements
- board meetings to be partly open to the public
- ensuring that the Health Select Committee has all of the annual review documents a week before its hearing next time.
Brown used that same approach in his response to Verrall, saying his Opposition counterpart was "worried about the bureaucracy, worried about the personalities rather than about the patients and about delivery. [That there was] nothing [in Verrall's speech or questions] about wait-lists, nothing in there about elective treatment, nothing in there about actually making sure we get the system delivering more for patients."
He eventually came to an answer, which as is common in Parliament, didn't answer the questions.
"So yes," Brown said, "we are making sure we are fixing Health New Zealand. We are focusing it back on the basics. We're putting back in place the financial systems and tools that are needed to ensure that it can deliver, are within its budget, and deliver more for patients, and that is what this government is doing and that is what I, as the Minister, am incredibly focused on."
Despite a plea from O'Connor to keep the questions and answers "rapid fire", the debate continued to have an abundance of long-winded remarks.
This week, the House finally completed the finance, housing, transport, education, and health sections of the debate, but nearly five hours remain, which MPs will sink their teeth into when they return to Parliament after the three-week school holiday sitting break.
*RNZ's The House, with insights into Parliament, legislation and issues, is made with funding from Parliament's Office of the Clerk.
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