Rabin Rabindran says documents were provided to the new Health Minister David Clark, listing problems with multiple Middlemore hospital buildings, on his visit to the Counties Manukau DHB on March 13.
The Health Minister David Clark has previously said he was only made aware of problems with one building during his visit.
Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
“It is not a thick stack of documents it was about 25 pages,” says Mr Rabindran “there is just one page which sets out which buildings have got asbestos, which buildings have got seismic and which buildings have got weather tighteners and which are the buildings which are considered critical infrastructure."
"There are ticks against each of those buildings as to which column they fall into. There are several buildings where they have all of these issues. If anyone looked at that they would have realised that there are other buildings with these same problems.”
He says that David Clark was presented with the documents on his visit to Middlemore hospital on March 13 and “In fact a hard copy of the document was presented to the minister and to his adviser, if they had a look at it they would have known.”
Talking to Checkpoint, Mr Rabindran said that a "statement of performance expectation document" which talked about cladding issues in Middlemore Hospital buildings was freely available online and was sent to the Minister in November 2017 signed by Lester Levy as Chair of CMDHB and himself as Deputy Chair."
When asked if it is concievable that Ministers didn't know the problems with multiple buildings, Mr Rabindran said "If they had read the papers that were presented they would have come to know how bad it was."
"I don't think there is an intention of anyone to mislead, what I would think is that they probably have not been properly advised because a whole lot of people have been involved in this process and funding takes a lot of time."
Mr Rabindran said that photos were shown to Health Minister David Clark by a general manager during his visit, of mould in separate buildings and that the Health Minister responded that he "had seen worse."
Both he and predecessor Jonathan Coleman have denied knowing the extent of the problems at Middlemore.
Labour Party MP David Clark Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King
Health Minister David Clark released a statement a short time ago saying:
“I am not going to respond to the ongoing selective leaking of information coming out of the Counties Manukau DHB. The most important issue here is the state the public health service has been left in after 9 years of neglect, which we are working to fix.
That said, I have a very clear memory of what I was told during my visit to CMDHB on March 13. I was told about the Scott Building, but other specific buildings were not discussed
During the visit I was handed a background document which I subsequently read. It covered a wide range of issues including clinical matters, demand for services, finances and facilities.
It contained some additional information about buildings that required remediation due to years of underfunding and neglect but nowhere did it mention either mould or rot.
My recollection of my discussions with Rabin Rabindran are also crystal clear. I made clear to him my disappointment that the other building issues were not raised with me face-to-face during the March 13 visit and he apologised for that."
