Civil Servant Debra Jensen was the general manager of communications, digital and marketing at Te Hiringa Hauora (THH). Questions have been repeatedly raised about conflicts of interest in several projects Jensen has been involved with, but were ignored. Health NZ took over THH earlier this year and has done its own investigation, but refuses to disclose its findings. Jensen resigned from Health NZ this month.
RNZ seems to be the only media site interested in this issue.
Jensen co-signed multi-million dollar contracts awarded to an advertising agency that her own company also had contracts with. […]
Allegations of conflicts of interest were made against Jensen in relation to the “That’s Us” [Covid] project, including that Jensen’s nephew and his partner – both university students at the time – were paid thousands of dollars a week to work on the campaign while they were living with Jensen. […]
Jensen co-owns Native Voice, a consultancy firm, with her partner Jason Ake. Native Voice has a contract with advertising agency VMLY&R to work on Census 2023.
VMLY&R is a regular supplier to THH. […]
In July 2021, Jensen was among five senior THH executives to sign off two contracts awarded to VMLY&R totalling $1.23m.
On September 20, she also co-signed a recommendation to contract VMLY&R for a $780,000 Hepatitis C campaign. […]
Then, in April this year, Native Voice itself was awarded a $4.8m Ministry of Health contract alongside VMLY&R and Bright Sunday to run a quit smoking campaign – a contract previously held by THH.
Colleagues claim many questions were raised but ignored.
Former colleagues told RNZ they repeatedly raised concerns with senior managers about Jensen’s potential conflicts of interest with Native Voice and her close links to some of the rangatahi recruited to work on the vaccination campaign.
They also had concerns that two paid interns recruited to the marketing team in November 2021 had close links to Jensen. One was her son’s girlfriend. The other, a daughter of an acquaintance.
Attempts to raise these concerns with managers were fruitless, they said.
“We were told it was ‘just the new Maori way of doing things’. We were made to feel like we were racist if we raised concerns,” said one, who tried to raise it with managers.
National’s health spokesman Dr Shane Reti believes Health NZ should release its investigation. He says, “The minister needs to release the report. He needs to convincingly address that conflict of interest.”
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