Although our reporting this week revealed that on opening the new hospital will have 20 ICU and high dependency beds compared with the original plan to open with 30, in Mr Brown’s mind that is not a reduction.
Why? Because both the original plan and the new one have the option of expanding to 40 beds at some unspecified future time.
We are expected to believe, without seeing it, new modelling has deemed these 10 beds unnecessary at the time the new hospital opens.
Maybe the health of southerners is going to improve so much in the next few years there will be fewer people needing complex surgery.
Even if primary care was properly funded and staffed and a comprehensive suite of effective disease prevention measures got the green light tomorrow, that would be wishful thinking.
This sort of fudgy nonsense from the minister over the ICU bed numbers is unnecessary and silly.
Mr Brown has a tough job.
It is not just because it is a cute play on words that getting the role of health minister is often referred to as a hospital pass.
It may be the most difficult portfolio outside the finance one to get right, involving managing a series of complex relationships in a highly political setting where every member of the public and every health professional has a definite point of view about what is right.
There will always be more demand for funding than any government is prepared to stump up. Difficult choices have to be made.
When things go wrong, people can suffer or die.
It is complex because our health system is complex.
Tinker in one part of it and it will affect another part.
It is not easy for anyone to get their head around how everything fits and what might be required to make it work better for the benefit of all those who use and need health services, those who provide such services, and the nation’s health in the long run.
At a time when health issues are hitting the headlines nationwide, any good news can sink in a morass of negativity.
But so far, Mr Brown, in his first three months in the role, is light years away from garnering the sort of respect given to such ministers as Annette King or even Tony Ryall, even by some of their detractors. Neither of them were shrinking violets or suffered fools gladly, but they grasped the complexity of the role and its relationships.
It is not clear Mr Brown does.
When members of the workforce are telling you they are short-staffed and stressed out, working under difficult conditions in clapped-out buildings, that they are not being heard, and eyeing up the greener grass across the Ditch, slagging them off publicly is not how you get them on side.
It does not fit with the government’s rhetoric about supporting the front line.
Nobody wants the senior doctors to strike today, particularly anyone who had a planned procedure which has had to be postponed.
But instead of inflaming the situation by inappropriately trying to inject himself into the stuttering negotiations which have been going on since last August, Mr Brown would be better to stand back and reflect on why it has come to this and how it could be avoided in future.
Does anybody get the best out of their staff with the sort of hostile behaviour Mr Brown is exhibiting?
His rationale is unclear. If he is on a mission to break the health unions, he is in la-la land.
His outbursts will more likely strengthen health workers’ resolve to present a united front.
Similarly, the ill-thought-out consultation about regulating the health workforce is creating an unwelcome distraction and riling up the health professions without doing anything meaningful to solve the system’s myriad problems.
It is time for a changed approach from Mr Brown. Listen more, jump to conclusions less often, and do not insist black is white.
