Hypocrisy not Hippocrates Guides Dr Ayesha Verrall

Hypocrisy not Hippocrates Guides Dr Ayesha Verrall

Recently Dr Ayesha Verrall, Labour’s spokesperson for Health, spoke in Parliament about the Healthy Futures (Pae Ora) Amendment Bill during its third reading.

She made a number of comments that are deeply, deeply hypocritical considering her actions as Associate Minister and Minster for both Health and the Covid-19 Response between November 2020 and November 2023.

The short video clips below are taken from Dr Ayesha Verrall’s speech during the third reading of the Healthy Futures (Pae Ora) Amendment Bill. Readers wishing to view her remarks in full can watch the complete Parliament recording here:

https://videos.parliament.nz/on-demand?id=cd477966-d0a5-4e2a-0833-08ded7923648&keyword=healthy%20futures

Sadly abominable things happen in health care, sometimes, and they must be spoken about.  Why would we want, as politicians to see these things suppressed and not surfaced? 

Yes Dr Verrall, abominable things have happened in health care under your watch as Minister and Associate Minister of Health and Covid-19 Response. Young healthy New Zealanders are prematurely DEAD following covid injections, and without adequate investigations. Those health professionals who have spoken up and tried to engage in discussion have been suppressed by politicians and their minions.  Why indeed would politicians want discussion about prematurely dead Kiwis suppressed?

To the doctors and nurses, pharmacists, lab technicians, allied health workers of all stripes, care and support workers who work in our health system, I want to say that we hear your concerns and that speaking up is an important service you provide for New Zealanders. 

Why, Minister Verrall, did so many health professionals get shut down during the covid response for voicing concerns then?  Why are they still going through disciplinary processes for speaking up 5 years later?

Many submissions to the select committee from professionals in our hospitals raised concerns about this bringing a chilling effect; that it is intended to stop doctors and nurses and other allied health professionals from speaking out when things go wrong in their hospitals.  My message to them is “It is your professional duty to do so when you see circumstances that are unsafe in public hospitals.”  Clinicians, whether you are a medical specialist or a nurse aide, all of you see things in our health system that sometimes goes wrong and I do not endorse a culture that means suppressing what they have to say, covering up, making them feel that they can lose their job.  The minister pointed out that one union’s contract has protections against.., for their members to be able to speak about, speak out, but what about the tens of thousands of nurses who work in our health system who might feel gagged by provisions in this bill.

Dr Verrall, those of us who followed our professional duty to speak up about the covid response, paid the price and did lose our jobs.  We were made examples of to prevent others from speaking.  You did endorse a culture of covering up during the covid response and you did not engage with those pointing out harm to New Zealanders. NZDSOS wrote to you directly on various occasions with evidence-backed concerns.

There is so much effort to silence health care workers from their duty to advocate through this effort to draw them into the cloak of public service neutrality which is an absolute joke.  Other crown entities don’t have this requirement.

Do you think it is a joke that the Medical Council foisted its “zero-risk medical product” (as per Dr Curtis Walker, Chair during the rollouts) onto doctors and turned all twenty thousand practising doctors in NZ away from medical ethics and into pharmaceutical sales reps? A joke that providing accurate information to patients was forbidden?

And you have complained that Minister Brown is not reappointing two senior medical council members – for foisting a decolonisation agenda onto medicine. But in doing so he has honoured both election promises and his ministerial duty to hold his officials to the Acts that govern them. 

You may be just a politician, ideology in tow, but you also promote your doctorliness to the public and expect to be trusted. You should be ashamed. Hippocrates not hypocrisy!