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Summarised by Centrist
Health New Zealand, responsible for the country’s healthcare system, was tracking its entire $28 billion budget on a single Excel spreadsheet—an archaic, error-prone tool completely unfit for managing billions of public dollars.
A scathing independent report by Deloitte found a staggering lack of financial oversight, uncontrolled spending, and savings plans so ineffective they might as well not exist.
According to Deloitte, the spreadsheet—the backbone of Health NZ’s financial tracking—was riddled with human errors, lacked proper tracking, and made it nearly impossible to verify uploaded data. A simple error could throw entire budgets off course.
The agency was burning through $130 million per month beyond its income, while its $500 million “savings plan” was deemed completely ineffective.
Minister of Health Simeon Brown is now reinstating a governing board to clean up the mess, after the previous board was sacked last year for its abysmal financial management.
Commissioner Lester Levy insists the agency is now “on a path to increased stability.”
