Dave Macpherson – Forget the headline, this is a video you need to watch

Matthew Tukaki (featured in the video) is Chair of the National Maori Council, but is not someone I have ever met, or had anything to do with. He has also previously been the Chair of the Australian National Suicide Prevention Council – I think he knows what he’s talking about.

I think a question you have to all consider is: how much public opprobrium is the Waikato DHB willing to wear as it dances to the insurers’ tune? (If indeed it is the insurer, and not the Ministry of Health and/or people within our own DHB).

The DHB had an opportunity to practice what it preaches, to put patients and their families first, to work with our whanau to reach an acceptable outcome so we could all move forward, but it threw that chance out of the window.

Will the Board let a private insurance company, and an external lawyer, make decisions on these matters for it? That is what is happening at the moment.

Ask to see the communications they make on your behalf with the Solicitor General – we haven’t seen those letters yet, and we guarantee you haven’t either.