Health: My experience of Lara

When tackled on the health and other cuts, senior Labor figures like to talk of the benefit of hindsight. When their past poor management is raised as an issue and said to be the reason for the cuts now, they like to subtly suggest the question “Why didn’t you say something at the time?”, without actually asking the question.

They can’t actually ask this question, because many people did say something at the time. Had they listened to these people there would be no need for cuts now.

Remarkably, after I had repeatedly made suggestions about being better managers and not wasting public money, the Premier’s representative asked: “Nigel, why are you so worried about waste of public money, when the public is not worried about waste of public money?” To the best of my recollection these were the exact words.

While I decided at the time that discretion was the better course and treated the question as rhetorical, the answer was always obvious. The public was not running the State, we were. And the public entrusted us with the job of running it in their best interest, not ours.

The present health cuts are potentially catastrophic. There are certainly serious problems with the front end of health, but they are problems that require imagination and investment, not staff cuts and budget cuts. The need for cuts is, and always has been, at the back end of health.

In a small way, I tried. But dealing with Lara when she was health minister was like talking to a brick wall. She could never see a problem or admit a problem, and therefore she could not fix a problem.

Even when I passed on a clever proposal from Steve Kons for cleaning up the waiting list at the Burnie public dental clinic, the Deputy Premier and I were not even given the courtesy of a reply.

When Lennon had a study done showing that a new Royal Hobart would cost us around $380 million, Lara decided that she should ask for $900 million, and later more than a billion. I never understood where she got those figures from, and she never explained them, and because she wasn’t on top of the Royal project we missed out on the opportunity to get the Commonwealth to fund it in 2007-8.

Lara was a lousy Health and Community Services Minister, yet surprisingly she has all the qualities needed to be a great Premier. She is nice person, yet capable of being tough. She can hold a cabinet together and articulate her policies to the press. What she has always lacked is business experience, which is fundamentally what crippled her as Health Minister. She needs to know how to make money and save money. Unfortunately she doesn’t.

She could solve this problem by having a couple of good business brains around her, but this is not the Labor way. Senior positions are reserved for friends, allies and family (I count factional enemies who have agreed to support you, as allies).

Probably the best person with relevant experience that she has access to is Kim Booth. Unfortunately senior Labor figures have always felt threatened by his abilities, instead of seeing him as a potential asset. Only Steve Kons ever saw Booth’s ability as a potential asset.

After Kim Booth, it is difficult to find anyone who Lara can turn to. She has taken the same course as Lennon, and fallen in with Bryan Green. That did not work out well for Lennon. She could employ some good people, but not recognising the problem she will never find the solution.

All about Nigel Burch: During the period 2005-2008 I was an adviser to Deputy Premier Steve Kons and also his electorate officer. Immediately prior to that I had been a director of the Tasmanian Farmers & Graziers. In the 1990s I was Managing Director of a listed gold mining company and later assisted the Bosnian government with problems in their state steel industry at the end of the war. I was honoured by the Australian Shareholders Assocation in1991 with a medal for services to small shareholders and assisted ABC 4-Corners with an award-winning documentary “Other People’s Money”. Recently I was a national director of the RSPCA.