Speech Notes

10 April 2001

Public meeting, release of Gisborne Cervical Screening Inquiry report

Thank you for the effort many of you have put in to attending this public meeting today for the release of the report into Under-reporting of Cervical Smear Abnormalities in the Gisborne region.

This report has, in many ways, been the focus of the 17 months I have spent as Minister of Health, and hardly a week has passed without me thinking about it, or without having aspects of it raised with me. 

But if it has been part of my life as Minister, I am well aware that the events that have been the subject of this Inquiry have affected some of you and your families in a far more personal and more direct way for far longer than that. 

That is why I feel humble talking to you today. 

The lessons learned from this Inquiry and from the past few years will mean that women in New Zealand have a far better cervical screening programme now, and will have an even better one in the future. And the reason for that is because of what happened to some of you who are here in this room. 

We have learned from the past, but sadly we have also had to learn from your experiences. 

My job as Minister is to ensure, as best I can, that the programme we have is a good one. I just wish that could have been brought about without any suffering on your part. 

It was particularly important to me, when I became Minister, to transfer all the hearings in the Inquiry to Gisborne.

The least that could be done was to ensure you had as convenient an access to the Inquiry as possible. The Inquiry was discussing what had happened to you, and you had the right to be there to hear that discussion. 

You also have the right to be here today to hear the initial outcome of the Inquiry's work. 

I say initial for a very good reason. The Inquiry has revealed what needs to be done. It is now our job to go ahead and do it. And only when it is done, and we can report back to the women of Gisborne that it has been done, can we say the Inquiry has actually run its course. 

I feel really deeply that it would be a significant betrayal of you if we did not do everything in our power to ensure that what has happened has not happened in vain. 

There is no doubt there is a far better screening programme in place now than there was a few years ago, and this is, in fact, accepted by the Inquiry. 

But we need to do more and more to make sure the programme meets the most exacting demands in terms of performance and quality control. 

The focus for the future must be very clear, and not only for the national cervical screening programme. The focus right through the health sector must be on the quality of our health services. 

We must continually look to decreasing the risk of events going wrong. We must continually look to increasing the likelihood that everything will go right. 

That's simple to say, perhaps, in ordinary circumstances. 

But there is nothing that could be called ordinary about today's circumstances. 

There's nothing that is simple about giving assurances to a group of people who have been living with the daily reminder of circumstances that went badly wrong. 

I have no way of knowing how long I will be Minister of Health, but I can assure you, however, that while I am Minister the Gisborne cervical screening inquiry will remain a focus that is with me every week and every month. 

It will do so not just because people will ask me about it, and keep me up to the mark, but because I am delivering this report to you, and I will not betray the trust that entails. 

Because the Inquiry was reporting to me, I have been forced to stay distant from its deliberations and its findings. 

It has been impossible to be distant emotionally, however, and from now on I don't have to be distant from the report in any way.