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Chris Hipkins Doubles Down Claim Lester Levy Is 'Cooking The Books'
Lillian Hanly, Political reporter
The Labour leader has doubled down on his health spokesperson's claims Health NZ's Commissioner is "cooking the books".
Verrall's comments were made under Parliamentary privilege, and she has not been prepared to repeat those claims since. She also refused to apologise to Levy.
But Chris Hipkins did not have Parliamentary privilege when he repeated the comments on Tuesday, while saying Verrall had not gone too far.
"When you're deliberately taking expenses from one year and moving them to a year in which they weren't incurred to make the books look better" Chris Hipkins said this morning, "I think the colloquial phrase of cooking the books applies".
Ayesha Verrall made the accusation during last week's scrutiny committee meetings, which Lester Levy strongly rejected at the time.
RNZ has contacted Levy for a response to Hipkins' comments.
The claim followed reports Health NZ included costs from this financial year, in the previous year's accounts, making the deficits under Levy's watch look smaller.
At the time, Levy said he resented that comment and asked for an apology. He also said he would provide evidence to refute those claims.
He pointed out there was no reason to "cook the books".
"The books are not good. There's serious under-performance, financial performance."
Hipkins said they were transferring costs from the next financial year to the previous financial year to "make the previous financial year look worse" and the "current financial year look better".
He also pointed out the Auditor-General had said it wasn't acceptable.
"Moving expenses from one year to another, when the expenses were not incurred in that year, I'm quite comfortable with saying that that is manipulating, cooking the books - whatever phrase you want to use."
Hipkins said Levy is the "Tsar of the health system" and that he should be "open to scrutiny".
When asked if he endorsed Verrall's comments that Levy has a "history" of cooking the books, Hipkins said "I absolutely back her," adding he's "quite comfortable with the comment she made".
He also stated he was comfortable with the comments he had made, despite making them outside of Parliamentary privilege.
"If he sues me for defamation he wouldn't have a leg to stand on."
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