Last weekend Mr Millar was reported by the Otago Daily Times questioning how requiring the cash-strapped board spending $35,000 on the annual fee for a crown monitor could be justified.
Mr Millar said this week it was not a personal issue about crown monitor Stuart McLauchlan, but the principle of accountability and transparency.
Mr McLauchlan had been appointed to the Southland board in 2009 by Health Minister Tony Ryall and has been reappointed twice since to the Southern board.
It is expected his main priority will be working with the board to improve the organisation's financial performance.
Mr Millar said that there was no way of anybody knowing whether crown monitors represented value for money.
The people who had contacted him since the ODT article had told him he was saying something "which needed to be said".
Mr Millar said it was his view that since the Minister of Health already selected the chairmen and deputy chairmen on all boards, there was already the ability to ensure the skill mix deemed necessary for boards without an extra appointment.
(The minister appoints four members to each district health board, including the chairman and deputy chairman, and there are seven elected members.)
Newly-appointed Labour health spokesman Grant Robertson said he would be taking the general issue of crown monitor accountability to the health select committee in the stead of former spokeswoman Ruth Dyson.
Ms Dyson had advised the Otago Daily Times, in response to questioning on the issue late last year, that she would bring up the matter at the select committee.
She said the appointment of a crown monitor was a "specific quite high level of intervention" and it needed to be warranted.
Without some sort of public accountability process, it was hard to know whether a board was doing anything which "it wouldn't have been doing without him".
Mr Ryall would not answer questions on the issue last week, but told the ODT last November that Mr McLauchlan's skills had been put to good use in ensuring the board "begins to address its financial problems, and that the organisation quickly adapts to its new role following the merger".
