'Complete rubbish’: Health NZ called out over $2m unadvertised contract
Thursday, 13 March 2025
New Zealand health consultancy businesses have hit back over Health NZ/Te Whatu Ora awarding a $2m contract to a UK-based company because it was “the only known provider with the essential skills” for the work.
They call the decision not to advertise the contract “disappointing”.
MBI Health is linked to embattled senior government manager John Bennett who at the time the contract was awarded was an advisor to Health NZ.
New Zealand health consultancy businesses have hit back at Health NZ’s claim that only one company, UK-based MBI Health — linked to embattled senior government manager John Bennett — had the skills to carry out a $2m contract which was not advertised.
In 2023, Health NZ/Te Whatu Ora engaged MBI Healthcare Technologies to carry out work related to patient waiting lists and improving the delivery of care in hospitals.
The company was co-founded by Bennett, Barry Mulholland and a third party in 2012. Bennett resigned as a director in 2020, but remains a director in two other companies with Mulholland, leading to conflict of interest concerns.
When the contract was awarded, Bennett was an advisor to Health NZ and had been since at least 2022.
In September 2024 he was employed in a senior management role at ACC and this year has been on secondment back to Health NZ.
On Friday, Bennett was stood down by ACC and is subject to an investigation, after a series of Stuff stories reported concerns about his conduct.
Those concerns included physical contact with co-workers and appearing shirtless in a work video call, which Bennett defended as, “So, yeah, it's hugging staff members and someone putting a camera on me while I was sat there at nine o’clock in the morning in the hot weather in Auckland.”
Health NZ initially responded to the conflict of interest concerns by saying “John Bennett has advised us that he has no conflicts of interest in relation to his secondment to Health NZ”.
“He is not involved in any Health NZ commercial bids or procurement and does not hold any financial or decision-making delegation in the role he has been seconded to.”
In response to further Stuff questions, Health NZ interim chief human resources officer Fiona McCarthy said the contract had not been advertised.
“The engagement of MBI was exempt from the open advertising requirements in our procurement processes as it was the only known provider with the essential skills and expertise necessary to deliver the specific services needed at that time.”
But that claim has been met with contempt from health industry insiders spoken to by Stuff.
One, who did not want to be named because of concerns for repercussions, said, “[Te Whatu Ora’s] claim that MBI were the only company able to provide those services is complete rubbish”.
“There are a number of organisations who could have provided it, along with at least a dozen individuals.”
One company which would have liked the opportunity to bid for the contract is public sector consultancy firm Synergia, which specialises in health services.
Synergia business support manager Shona Hutchison said the company would have been “very interested” in the contract if it had been advertised.
“Synergia is a New Zealand based and owned company and has a strong track record of conducting similar work,” she said.
“It is disappointing that contracting within New Zealand was not thoroughly explored. Testing the market for a request for interest [and] information would have been a more appropriate first step.”
Pete Chandler, former DHB CEO and founder of Exsomnis Healthcare Consultancy, said the decision to award the contract to an off-shore company was particularly concerning in light of job losses here.
“It’s important to remember that there are thousands of very highly skilled professionals in New Zealand who have been made redundant over recent years and are currently looking for work,” he said.
“This is especially the case for many dedicated former health professionals who are livid to read that work within their skillset is being outsourced overseas, ignoring the talent and extensive experience on hand.”
The industry insider said Health NZ should provide evidence of the due diligence it had undertaken to justify its claim that only MBI Health fitted the bill.
“Otherwise isn’t it just maladministration?”
They also suggested Health NZ did not necessarily even need to engage an external organisation to conduct the work.
“[Te Whatu Ora] actually have internal capabilities that do this. We've just had the Deloitte report released talking about a lack of financial controls. How much of that was due to out-of-delegation or improper contracting?”
The Deloitte report, released last week, was highly critical of Health NZ’s financial management, concluding the decline in its financial performance was caused by “losing control of the critical levers that drive financial outcomes … the key factor was the inability to identify and respond to the disconnect between expenditure and revenue”.
“The decline in cash position was primarily due to increased payments to staff and suppliers that were beyond budgeted levels,” the report said.
A key focus of the MBI Health contract was “to upskill and share knowledge with Health NZ staff both nationally and in districts so the work would continue after the contract ended”.
The end of the contract was in December 2024, by which time it had cost $2,006,073.
“In this situation, a whole bunch of people had to let this go for it to be possible,” said the health industry insider.
Health NZ declined to comment further.