"You forgot Poland"

The biggest issue for Health NZ is not whether there are ten layers of management or twenty. The issue is whether there is too much.

Photo by Chris Curry on Unsplash

In the 2004 presidential debate, then-Senator John Kerry criticised then President George W. Bush's coalition supporting the Iraq War as not being “grand” enough since it only included the UK and Australia.

"You forgot Poland," Bush shot back, in a retort that instantly crystalised as a quintessential example of deflecting criticism by focusing on trivial details. Bush’s comment aimed to salvage the coalition's credibility by highlighting a minor omission, as if the addition of Poland brought the US over the threshold of grandeur that was touted at the outset of the war. Poland is not to be sneezed at, but it was not the diplomatic or military power like France, Germany or Russia and that’s the point Kerry was making.

Bush’s strategy of nitpicking away substance is now echoed in the Wellington media’s defence of Health NZ’s empire of bureaucracy.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon recently claimed that Health NZ is burdened with 14 layers of management. The point of his saying this was to highlight the excessive administration hindering the organisation. The claim was met with immediate scrutiny, with critics arguing that the figure included non-managerial roles.

Patients themselves were included in one counting, which is obviously risible. The anctual numbers of management layers seems to fluctuate by two or three depending on how and what you count and which hospital or health services you are using.

If Luxon’s count was inflated by one or two layers there’s a fair criticism to be made in that. But lost in all this is the more critical question of whether Health NZ is overmanaged and excessively administered. Isn’t that kind of an important question?