PSA Media Release
Dec 22, 2011

Health Minister wants to short-change Cantabrians

Cantabrians feeling ripped-off by the $538,529 pay-packet of Christchurch City Council’s CEO Tony Marryatt may soon be short-changed by Health Minister Tony Ryall, says the PSA.

Tony Ryall has asked Canterbury DHB ‘to look outside the square’ and consider public private partnerships (PPPs) for the rebuilding of Christchurch Hospital.

“Public Private Partnerships simply don’t work,” says PSA National Secretary Richard Wagstaff.

“Tony Ryall says he wants value for money so the last thing he should be promoting is PPPs.

“PPPs overseas have proved to be wasteful, costly, complex and a poor use of public money.

In 2009, Britain’s National Audit Office concluded that the purported benefits of PPP schemes were so difficult to prove the government couldn’t be satisfied that they offered value for money for the taxpayer.

Boris Johnson, the Conservative mayor of London, went further in his summation:

“In other countries this would be called looting. Here it is called the PPP.”

“The Health Minister talks about future proofing Canterbury’s health infrastructure, but a PPP to build a new hospital, manage it and run non-clinical support services will be a black hole in which to pump tax payers’ money,” says Richard Wagstaff.

“In Britain taxpayers have paid 229 billion pounds for PPP facilities worth only 56 billion pounds. On top of that, they’re paying maintenance costs for schools and hospitals that have closed and footed the bill for the collapsed London Underground PPP, worth 14 billion pounds.

“Why recommend such a failed model to the people of Canterbury? In doing so the Health Minister also appears to have forgotten that he is a shareholder in Health Benefits Limited, a public agency set up to provide shared non-clinical support services to DHBs.

Is he now looking to undermine his own shared services initiative by proposing privatisation?” says PSA National Secretary Richard Wagstaff.

Media contact Michelle Carlile-Alkhouri 027 600 5498

National Secretary Richard Wagstaff 027 277 8131

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