A DG like no other

The numerous household items that bear his image may put him up there with Che Guevara as a pop culture icon

It was always likely Ashley Bloomfield would leave the director-general’s job before his term ran out.

Forthcoming changes at the centre of the health system make Dr Bloomfield’s decision to depart in July a reasonable one, in light of the recalibration of the Ministry of Health he leads into a policy body rather than a funder and director of the public health system.

Instead, we will have Health New Zealand as the operations heart and the Māori Health Authority as the driver of improved health outcomes.

The PR might refer to the ministry as the “chief steward” of the reformed system, with a focus on strategy, policy, regulation and monitoring but, in reality, the future dynamic of the three agencies is unknown.

Dr Bloomfield has a beating public health heart and that meant he wouldn’t walk away, like your archetypal chief executive, as long as the pandemic was on the wrong trajectory.

So the stars aligned. COVID, if not beaten, has become manageable, and this week Dr Bloomfield’s resignation was announced and, like so many people around the country, I was happy for him and a little sad for me.

In the early weeks of 2020, pre-pandemic, I pondered the potential headlines for the year ahead.

I wrote: “There’s no doubting the sector breathed a sigh of relief when the eager and optimistic David Clark took over the health portfolio and, likewise, when the eminently likeable Ashley Bloomfield became director-general of health. ‘Davash’, the nice guy duo, has been open to discussion and ideas, but there is an undercurrent of concern that not enough is happening fast enough. And it’s hard to be brutal when Davash is trying hard.”

Dr Clark’s lack of political experience in the tough health portfolio before long led to his downfall during the first COVID lockdown.

In Dr Bloomfield’s case, lack of experience was not the problem; rather, the onerous task of turning a demoralised ministry into a focused authority within the sector – and the sector’s impatience for that to happen.

We’ll never know if Dr Bloomfield would ultimately have succeeded in that task. The coronavirus pandemic came along and any shortcomings the sector might have perceived in his corporate management were instantly replaced with absolute relief that he was at the helm.

The “Ashley phenomenon” has been incredible, and uniquely Kiwi. On a between-lockdowns holiday in Rawene, I met a dressmaker who proudly showed me her “Ashley” bag. Her effusive praise and fondness for the man she saw keeping us all safe were humbling.

The numerous household items that bear his image may yet put him up there with Che Guevara as a pop culture icon.

Some have been critical of a senior public servant being turned into a super hero (aided and abetted, I might add, by a cover photo taken by our own Virginia McMillan). But Dr Bloomfield never sought celebrity and it was obvious it was as big a surprise to him as it was to the rest of us.

As a country, we had never experienced anything like lockdown and as a community – the team of five million – we admired prime minister Jacinda Ardern for her leadership, but we loved Ashley for making us feel safer.

He was, and is, mild mannered, quietly spoken, confident with data, slightly geeky, whimsically funny – who will forget those eyebrows? And he puts us at ease. On the surface maybe more of a Clark Kent than a Superman.

It was never going to be an unblemished run but, with a generosity not shown to most of our tall poppies, the public forgave Dr Bloomfield when he messed up. His political bosses were less tolerant of ministry missteps that created political embarrassment, as with the lack of expected regular testing of border workers during the elimination phase of the COVID response and the controversy over access to data for Māori providers.

Dr Bloomfield still has another four months to go, in which a lot can happen, but the essence of his service will not change. And it is likely to inform the choice of his replacement.

My daughter quoted me a tweet yesterday: “I feel sorry for the next DG of Health who is going to have to put up with real strong ‘You’re not our real dad’ energy from the whole country.”

Much will be written about the pandemic in future years. Ultimately, I think the “Ashley” phenomenon is how everyday New Zealanders themselves chose to respond to the scary, untidy and unknown consequences of global pandemic. They trusted him. Nothing – not even the harshest review – will change that.