This week RNZ discovered a memo they received under the Official Information Act from Mr Brown’s office about the plans for outsourcing of the surgeries had the risks blacked out, but the same memo released by Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora did not.
Mr Brown’s excuse was it was "standard practice to redact free and frank advice from officials".
"They express a range of views to me, and outline risks and issues. That is part of the exchange needed between ministers and officials."
But was there any consideration of whether this was in the public interest?
In this instance, the memo was signed by the chairman of the health workforce and system efficiencies committee Andrew Connolly, a colorectal surgeon and former Medical Council chairman who has held many high-profile health positions, not someone likely to be deterred if his free and frank advice was publicised.
HNZ, which came under fire from the outgoing Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier for its woeful OIA compliance, should be congratulated in this instance because it did the right thing.
The information Mr Brown blacked out warned it might be "tempting" to aim for "speedier" cuts to wait times, but that going too fast risked significantly distorting the system.
"Any degradation of the ability to maintain staffing in public will significantly threaten overall production and hospital flow, including for acute work."
Such concerns had already been raised by critics of the proposal outside of HNZ and the minister’s office.
As we said previously, Mr Brown’s idea of having as much planned care as possible delivered by the private sector, freeing public hospitals for acute needs, suggests he has a limited understanding of the role of the public hospital system.
It is no surprise the unredacted memo outlined the risk of a loss of specialist surgeons, anaesthetists and medical imaging technicians from public health to private hospitals.
These delayed cases would be the more complex ones, "particularly cancer surgery", the memo said.
Mr Brown has pushed the idea people waiting for planned operations do not care where they are done as long as they are done as soon as possible. But would people think having their family members wait longer for cancer and complex surgery as a result was OK?
Another risk redacted in Mr Brown’s release is the "degradation" in training junior doctors publicly.
Since much of their training involves the simpler procedures, that raises questions about whether that is expected to move to the private sector, how that might work and who would pay.
As we have also already pointed out, taxpayers pay for the ongoing training of specialists working in both private and public sectors as well as providing the emergency back-up for private patients.
The question of whether this push for private surgery has the potential to irreparably damage the public system is not something which should be ignored.
Mr Brown needs to be upfront about these risks. He must also get the memo about the importance of complying with the spirit and letter of the OIA.
Looking the part at Dunedin hospital site
There are those among us who appreciate road cones. The proliferation of orange plastic might be ugly, and we might sometimes not be able to easily understand why it’s there, but it can also give us hope something is happening.
Road cone aficionados find that reassuring. Their fingers do not hover over their cellphones, desperate to contact the road cone hotline when they see a sea of orange which baffles.
Some in the city might have felt similar hope about progress when they saw a flock of high-visibility vest wearers swarming over the new Dunedin hospital inpatient building site this week.
We are not sure why they needed the high-vis, but we hope it was not to protect them from further cuts to the project.
