Government’s top mental health boss leaves job after 10 months
The Ministry of Health’s top mental health boss Toni Gutschlag has left her role as the sector continues to struggle.
Gutschlag was acting as the deputy director general for mental health and addictions, the Ministry’s top mental health roles, for the past ten months.
She has been involved in some controversy. Mental Health Foundation Shaun Robinson accused of her attempting to “gag” him when he criticised the Government’s performance in mental health. Gutschlag denied this claim.
Gutschlag was also involved in the controversial editing down of a damning and routine mental health report, writing in an email she was worried there was “a lot of data and negative statistics” within the document.
Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield eventually had to apologise to the Minster of Health over that report, after officials misled the public and the minister by saying that all the statistics cut out of the document were publicly available elsewhere.
An email from Bloomfield to Ministry staff obtained by Stuff revealed Gutschlag will be moving into another role at the Ministry monitoring the mental health performance of district health boards.
Let me see if I can get this completely straight.
After intense criticism that the $1.9billion poured into mental health resulted in sweet fuck all, the Wellington bureaucrat responsible for gagging the Mental Health Foundation and censoring reports to hide ‘negative stats’ will simply be moved along to another plum job inside the bureaucracy in the never ending protected elite bubble that is the Wellington bureaucracy?
Un.
Fucking.
Believable.
Jacinda pumped $1.9 billion into mental health and what has she got for it? 5 extra acute mental health beds! The Wellington bureaucracy are laughing at her and divvying up the latest splurge of cash on whatever they want.
New Zealanders don’t understand that the representative democracy they interact with once every 3 years is merely a masquerade of democracy, a pretense to keep you voting and giving the process the flimsiest of legitimacies, the real powers are the Wellington bureaucracy and a Party’s success is determined purely by how much they can force the Wellington bureaucracy to actually implement policy.
In the words of the great Unionist, Robert Reid…
Winning an election is one thing, forcing the self interested Wellington Bureaucracy to implement social policy for voters is completely another.
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Oh c’mon, Martyn,…$1.9 billion into mental health and 5 extra acute mental health beds is still 5 beds. I just hope those beds are gilded gold and silver plated, that’s all. So shut your trap , mate,… stop your bloody whinging and complaining. It makes perfect sense!
Now,… about a few re runs of the reality TV shows regards Mary Poppins we’ve been promised,… that’s what we want to hear all about ! And ferk the bloody beds FFS!
Geez!
No, Jacinda got 5 extra beds and, after much focus grouping, a list of excuses, the best they’ve come up with is everything takes time.
Not only is it impossible to believe a failure like Gutcslag retained her job after more or less falsifying a report, and that she is even employable at all, it’s that the Minister for Health is still employed.
It’s major policy delivery failures like this that cost Labour dearly in support and worse, just cement into place the perception that they cannot organize anything.
She would have been moved sideways into an equivalent paying non-job and with the same rank because that’s much quicker and cheaper than trying to sack her.
Trying to sack a senior public servant for incompetence is almost impossible – too much to prove in court, takes too long and risks embarrassing the Ministry and the political class.
She will be re-structured out when the DHBs are merged into the NHS. I know of other government agencies restructured to remove a single senior manager who have very hard to prove failings, like bullying.
Yet another example of the Labour Party being completely inept.
Like this:
The great big list of John Key’s big fat lies (UPDATED) | The …https://thestandard.org.nz › the-great-big-list-of-john-ke…
Oh, and BTW?… underline the WHOLE of the above ‘link’ to get the most out of it when you copy and paste it to google….
just sad that John Key is no longer the head of the country and that the list of failures for Labour will be as long.
So is the answer for the Government to become embroiled in a never ending legal battle to sack her?
It seems to me that the failures to deliver are often the result of the Public Service incompetence or own agenda’s.
And that’s what happens when Labours union affiliates protect their own, incompetence. Fuck the PSA!
Now.. how’s that song go again? Oh yeah….
‘ I work in an office every day, every second Wednesday I collect my pay, I’m perfectly secure and I think it’s bliss, to work in the civil service’
This Bomber is the evil of un fettered neo liberal capitalism accelerated by Key and his gangsters supported three times in a row probably by people who knew or lost someone to suicide.
As long as the current corrupt bureaucracy continues unchallenged by the current members of parliament and the public there will be no real change.
The status quo and powerful interests control this country and kiwis will never force change they are to comfortable.
The real news stories are supressed to suit the economic system and its enablers.
This Bomber is the evil of un fettered neo liberal capitalism accelerated by Key and his gangsters supported three times in a row probably by people who knew or lost someone to suicide.
As long as the current corrupt bureaucracy continues unchallenged by the current members of parliament and the public there will be no real change.
The status quo and powerful interests control this country and kiwis will never force change they are to comfortable.
The real news stories are supressed to suit the economic system and its enablers.
This is common practice they did it with Grannine Moss CEO of Oranga Tamariki.
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